Not fully understanding Him, and yet believing He was some wonderful person, she repeated His own request, but with a changed meaning,—­“Sir, give me this water.”  Perhaps to make her feel her sinfulness and to lead her into a better life, He showed her that though He was a stranger, He knew her past history.  Her astonishment increased and she exclaimed, “Sir, I perceive that Thou art a Prophet.”  Ashamed, she quickly changed the subject.

She and her people claimed that Mount Gerizim was the holy place of the Holy Land; while the Jews said that Jerusalem was “the place where men ought to worship.”  She wanted the Prophet she had so unexpectedly met to decide between them.  With calmness, solemnity and earnestness, He made a sublime declaration to her, meant for Jews, Samaritans and all men.  It was this:  “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father....  The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth:  for such doth the Father seek to be His worshipers.  God is a spirit:  and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

But this did not satisfy her.  It was all so new and strange, so different from what she and her people believed, that she was not prepared to accept it from an unknown stranger, though he seemed to be a prophet.  She thought of One greater than she thought He could be, One who was wiser than any prophet then living, or who ever had lived, One who she believed was to come.  So, with a sigh of disappointment, her only reply was, “I know that Messiah cometh; ... when He is come, He will declare unto us all things.”

How the quickened ear of John must have made his heart thrill at the name Messiah.  Until a few weeks before, he too had talked of His coming, but already had heard Him declare many things which no mere prophet had spoken.  Is he not prompted to break the silence of a mere listener?  Is not his finger already pointed toward Jesus?  Are not the words already on his tongue?—­“O woman, this is He,” when Jesus makes the great confession he made before Pilate, saying to the Samaritaness, “I that speak unto Thee, am He.”

So it was that He whose coming the angels in their glory announced to the shepherds in Bethlehem, He whom the Baptist proclaimed to multitudes on the Jordan, He whose glory was manifested to the company in Cana, made Himself known to this low, ignorant, sinful, doubting, perplexed stranger, in words “to which all future ages would listen, as it were with hushed breath and on their knees.”

These words of Jesus to the woman, “I am He,” closed their conversation, so unexpected to her when she came with her water-pot, in which she had lost all interest.  Her mind and heart had been filled instead.  She had drawn from Him richer supplies than Jacob’s well could ever contain.  From that hour she thought of it, not so much as Jacob’s well as the Messiah’s well.