but would God they all were animated with that full-grown confidence of faith, which, in a visit of two days, our great Master's preaching had raised to such strength and maturity in the honest hearts of these half-taught Samaritans !

These facts, then, are clearly deducible from the text, that the Samaritans of our Saviour's day, no less than the more instructed Jews, expected a Messiah; that they knew no less than the Jews that the time was come for his appearance; that, in the Messiah, they expected, not like the mistaking Jews, a Saviour of the Jewish nation only, or of Abraham's descendants, but of the world-a Saviour of the world from moral rather than from physical evil.

Of these facts, I may hereafter, with God's gracious assistance, endeavour to investigate the causes. The speculation will be no less improving than curious. It will give us occasion to inquire by what means God had provided that something of a miraculous, beside the natural, witness of himself should remain among the Gentiles in the darkest ages of idolatry. We shall find, if I mistake not, that a miraculous testimony of God, as the tender parent of mankind, founded upon early revelations and wide spread prophecies, beside that testimony which the works of nature

bear to him as the universal Lord, was ever existing in the heathen world, although for many ages the one was little regarded, and the other lay buried and concealed. We shall, besides, have occasion to consider and to explain many prophecies that lie scattered in the books of Moses. When I have shown you what were the foundations of the previous faith of the Samaritans in the Messiah to come, I may then proceed to inquire, upon what evidence the people of Sychar were induced to believe that Jesus was the expected person. But, as these topics will require some accuracy and length of disquisition, I shall for the present decline them; and I shall bring my present discourse to a conclusion, when I have mentioned and considered a difficulty which some find in the story of our Lord's visit to the town of Sychar, and of his conference with the woman at the well; and which they think a great one, though in my judgment, it is either altogether groundless, or, if it have any foundation, it is nevertheless entirely removed by the discovery which my text makes of the state of the Samaritans' faith at the time of our Lord's appearance. Whence was it, it hath been said, that Jesus, who declared himself not sent to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel, should, to these

Samaritans, (a race which in a more advanced period of his ministry he ranked with Gentiles, when he first sent his apostles out to announce the approach of the kingdom of heaven, forbidding them to go into any Gentile province, or to enter any Samaritan town,) whence was it, that in this early period, to these Samaritans, and in particular to a woman of that country, whose character at that time was not irreproachable, whatever her succeeding life might be when she became a disciple of our Lord, whence was it that at this early period, in this country, and to this woman, our Lord declared himself more explicitly than it is supposed he had yet done in any part of Judea, or even in private among his own disciples?

Perhaps the supposition which creates this difficulty the supposition that Jesus had not declared himself explicitly, either among the Jews in general, or to any of his disciples in private may be unfounded: At least, it is no proof that it is true, that we read not in any of the four evangelists that Jesus had, at any time before this interview with the Sycharite woman, said to any one, either in public or in private, "I am the Messiah." To those who consider the abridged manner in which the evangelists have written- in

which they professed to write the story of their Master's life, omitting many more incidents than they have related, to those who consider this circumstance, it will be no argument that no declaration equally explicit had been previously made, that none such is recorded. The important transactions of the whole interval between our Lord's baptism and his return into Galilee after the first passover, which are contained in the four firstchapters of St. John's Gospel, the three other evangelists have altogether passed by: And those who are read in history, either sacred or profane, well know, that the negative of any probable fact is never to be concluded from the silence and omission of even the most accurate and exact historians. From the narrative contained in the three first chapters of St. John's Gospel, my conclusion, I confess, would be, that our blessed Saviour was from the very first sufficiently explicit, with his select associates, upon the general point of his pretensions; and neither at Jerusalem nor in Galilee at all reserved in public. But, granting the truth of the supposition upon which the difficulty is raised,

I

say the solution of the difficulty is easy to be found, in the view which the text displays of the religious opinions of the Samaritans

at the time of our Lord's visit to the town of Sychar. The Samaritans at that time had truer notions of the Messiah's character and

office- I will not say, than any that were commonly to be found among the Jews — but I will say, than any one even of the apostles had, before their minds were enlightened by the Holy Spirit, after our Lord's ascension. Now, we are told that it is one of the maxims of God's government, "that to him that hath" to him that hath acquisitions of his own, made by an assiduous improvement of his talents, by a studious cultivation of his natural endowments, and a diligent use of the external means of knowledge which have been afforded him- "to him shall be given" the means of greater attainments; "but from him that hath not"—from him who can show no fruits of his own industry -"from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have." This unprofitable servant, in the natural course of things, and by the just judgment of God, shall lose the advantages which through sloth and indolence he hath neglected to improve. By this maxim, every particular person's rank and station will be determined in the world to come. If it is not constantly observed in the present world, the necessity of departing from it either is the result of