Practical Observations.

1. God's work does not fatigue and weaken. It refreshes and strengthens. It is meat for the soul. It is the idlers in the vineyard who are sickly. It is the workers who are fresh, vigorous, and full of rejoicing.

2. Harvest is a season of rejoicing. Pentecost, when the first fruits were waved, was a festival of joy. The “Harvest Home” has been an era of gladness in every land. What a time of heavenly rejoicing when the reapers in life's 79harvest and their sheaves stand together in the presence of the Lord, and rejoice together!

3. The fields are now white for the harvest; the harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he may send laborers into his harvest.

4. Though wearied, he does not neglect the occasion and opportunity offered to him. He commences the conversation by a natural request. He opens the woman's heart by requesting from her a favor. He passes, by a natural transition from the physical to the spiritual world, from nature to the truth of which nature testifies.—Abbott.

5. Had you but stood by Jacob's well and seen the look of Jesus, and listened to the tones of his voice, or, had you been in Sychar during those two bright and happy days, hearing the instruction, so freely given, and so gratefully received, you would have had the evidence of sense to tell you with what abounding joy to all who are waiting and who are willing, Jesus breaks the bread and pours out the water of everlasting life. Multiplied a thousand fold is the evidence to the same effect now offered to the eye and ear of faith. Still, from the lips of the Savior of the world, over all the world the words are sounding forth: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” Still, the manner of his dispensation of the great gift, stands embodied in the words: “Thou wouldst have asked, and I would have given thee living water.” And still the other voices are heard catching up and re-echoing our Lord's own gracious invitation: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”—Hanna.

6. In the temple, between the court of the Gentiles and the next inner court, was a marble screen or curiously carved fence, some two feet high, beyond which no Gentile could venture. Had a Samaritan put his foot inside of that “wall of partition,” he would have been whirled away in a fury of rage and stoned to death in the twinkling of an eye. But Jesus was treading down that partition wall. This visit in Samaria is of singular importance, at the opening of Christ's ministry, in two respects: First, as a deliberate repudiation and rebuke of the exclusiveness of the Jewish church; and secondly, and even more significantly, as to the humane manner of his treatment of a sinning woman. It was the text from which flowed two distinguishing elements of his ministry—sympathy with mankind, and the tenderest compassion for those who have sinned and stumbled.