But true love discerns the possible lily in the black slime bulb at the pond’s bottom and woos it into blossoming flower, till its purity and beauty greet our delighted eyes.  Under the simple tact of love’s true touch, out of such surroundings grows a faith, through the successive stages of gossipy curiosity, cynical remark, interest, eagerness, guilty self-consciousness that would avoid any such personal conversation, out and out comes a faith that means a changed life, and then earnest bringing of others till the whole village acclaims Jesus a Saviour, the Saviour.

And the very title they apply to Jesus reveals as by a flash-light the chief personal meaning the interview had for this outcast woman.  In one way her faith meant more than Nicodemus’, for it meant a radical change of outer life with her.  And many a one stops short of that, though the real thing never does, and can’t.[68]

Then the circle widens yet more, geographically.  Jew, Samaritan, it is a Roman this time, one of the conquering nation under whose iron heel the nation writhes restlessly.  He is of gentle birth and high official position.  It is his sense of acute personal need that draws him to Jesus.  The child of his love is slipping from his clinging but helpless grasp.

There’s the loose sort of hearsay groping faith that turns to Jesus in desperation.  Things can’t be worse, and possibly there might be help.  There’s the very different faith that looks Jesus in the face and hears the simple word of assurance so quietly spoken.  He actually heard the word spoken about his dying darling, “thy son liveth.”

Then there is that wondrous new sort of faith whose sharper hooks of steel enter and take hold of your very being as you actually experience the power of Jesus in a way wholly new to you.  As it came to his keenly awakened mind that the favourable turn had come at the very moment Jesus uttered those quiet words, and then as he looked into the changed face of his recovering child, he became a changed man.  The faith in Jesus was a part of his being.  The two could never be put asunder.  So the Roman world brought its grateful tribute of acceptance to this great wooing brooding Lover.  The wooing had won again.

And now there’s another extreme social turnabout in the circle that feels the power of Jesus’ wooing.  We turned from Jerusalem aristocrat to Samaritan outcast; now it’s from gentle Roman official to a beggaring pauper.  It is at the Tabernacles’ visit.  Jesus, quietly masterfully passing out from the thick of the crowd that would stone Him, noticed a blind ragged beggar by the roadway.  One of those speculative questions that are always pushing in, and that never help any one is asked:  “Who’s to blame here?”

With His characteristic intense practicality Jesus quietly pushes the speculative question aside with a broken sentence, a sentence broken by His action as He begins helping the man.  In effect He says, “Neither this man nor his parents are immediately to blame; the thing goes farther back.  But”—­and He reaches down and begins to make the soft clay with His spittle—­“the thing is to see the power of God at work to help.”  And the touch is given and the testing command to wash, and then eyes that see for the first time.