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"Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ; when he is come he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he." John 4; 21—26.

THIS is a part of the conversation which our blessed Lord had with the woman of Samaria, at Jacob's well. The whole conversation is deeply interesting and instructive, and I invite your attention to it, this mor ning, with the view of showing the spirit of the woman as a bigot, the wisdom of the Saviour in the treatment of her, and the happy consequences which resulted from his manner of treating her.

On the morning of the 4th of last April, having spent the preceding night in Nabulus, the ancient Schechem afterwards Sychar, I left the town about 9 o'clock, in company with several of my fellow travellers, and began to ascend Mount Gerizim, which rose before us to the height of about 800 feet, and stretched to the east, the point which we wished to attain. The ascent was steep and difficult; but after near an hour's hard toil, we reached the highest elevation, where the ancient Samaritans were wont to pay their worship, and where now the little remnant of them, residing at Nabulus, go in procession four times a year for the same purpose. Here is their holy place, where they sacrifice the passover, seven lambs among them all, and perform their various religious services, believing them to have a peculiar holiness and acceptableness

• It is due to the respected author of the following discourse to say that, suggested as the subject was by his visit to Mount Gerizim, the sermon was hastily written soon after his return for his ordinary pulpit ministrations without thought of publication, and it is now given to the public without revision, at the solicitation of the

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EDITOR.

to God, because performed on this particular spot. There is no temple there, though there are the ruins of one, and the fragments of buildings which lie scattered thick around, indicate that a large town once occupied this site. The view from this position is one of exceeding beauty and grandeur. Overlooking the intervening hills and valleys, you see in the west, at the distance of some twenty or thirty miles, the Mediterranean, bordering the broad rich plain of Sharon, stretching far to the north and south. Over against you, on the north, rises Mount Ebal and to an equal height with that of Mount Gerizim; but more bold and rocky if possible, and so near that voices can be heard from one mountain to the other, separated only by a valley of about 500 yards wide. Beneath you, at the east, lies spread out a rich extended plain, including the tomb of Joseph, Jacob's farm as it is called, and also the well which bears his name. Along the foot of the Mount and on the edge of the plain, runs the road which leads from Jerusalem to Galilee, on which our Lord and his disciples were wont to travel, as they went to and from these places. Standing on that spot, the summit of Gerizim, with the various localities distinctly marked and spread out in full view before me, I could easily imagine that I saw the blessed Saviour and his followers, on the occasion referred to in our text, wending their way along this road around the south east base of the mountain, and drawing near to Jacob's well. There the Master, wearied with his journey and the heat of the day, seats himself by the well, while his disciples pass up the valley a short distance, to the city to buy food. At this point a woman of Samaria comes near to draw water. With a view to engage her in conversation, our Saviour asks her to give him to drink. Instantly her prejudices are roused, and she replies, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? There had been a controversy between the Jews and Samaritans of long standing. It related especially to the proper place of worshipping God, the Jews claiming that it was in Jerusalem, and the Samaritans that it was in Mount Gerizim. This controversy ran so high and was carried on with such bitterness of spirit, that it interrupted all the civilities of life, and even prevented common dealings with one another. This old enmity continues to the present day, and the little handful of Samaritans, about 120* in number, residing in Nabulus, still insist that on Mount Gerizim is the very place where God is to be worshipped, and all the world are wrong in this point but themselves.

The woman who came to draw water had caught the spirit of her sect. She was evidently full of the subject in controversy, and it so absorbed her thoughts and perverted her feeling as to make her utterly blind to the deep, spiritual instruction which fell from the lips of the divine Teacher. Hence, when he spoke of giving her living water, if she would but ask it, of which if one drink he shall never thirst,

* They are variously estimated from 120 to 150.

she could think only of common literal water, and at once began to question whether he was greater than Jacob, who had given the well to her ancestors and drank of it himself with his children and cattle.

And when, in the course of the conversation, she was convinced that our Lord was a prophet, because he showed himself acquainted with her secret history and thoughts, instead of seeking instruction from him how she might repent of sin and be saved, she at once raised the old dispute and says: Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, but ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. The great thing with her was the place, the manner, the form of worship, not the spirit, the life, the heart of it. Though her morals were very questionable, and she was at this time living with one who was not her husband, still she was mighty zealous for her sect, and was ready at once to enter into a dispute as to the place and manner of worship. In a word, she was a bigot. She attached an undue importance to the mere circumstantials of religion, to forms and ceremonies. She was obstinately and unreasonably wedded to a sect, a party, a practice and ritual, which had respect to the externals, the outside of religion; and this made her exclusive, filled her with prejudice and dislike against all others who differed from her in opinion, or did not come up to her standard, in regard to these outward, non-essential parts of worship. This is the proper idea of a bigot; and I have drawn it out thus particularly, that you may know just what character is denoted by the term. It denotes a person who has a blind unreasonable attachment to a particular creed, or place, or mode of worship; and maintains that attachment with an exclusive sectarian spirit. It is no bigotry to hold fast the great essentials of religion, or to maintain with earnestness and zeal, the faith once delivered to the saints, which involves the honor of God and the salvation of man. Our Lord was no bigot, though he made faith in him and his doctrines essential to salvation. Paul was no bigot, though he maintained the truth of the gospel; with uncompromising firmness, and even wished those were cut off who perverted the true gospel and preached one that was false. So Luther and the Reformers of his day were no bigots; they waged deadly war against the corruptions of Rome, and maintained, at the peril of their lives, the great fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Bigotry does not consist in believing, loving and maintaining the truth and ordinances of God, with a zeal and firmness proportioned to their relative importance. But it consists in magnifying what is small; in erecting into terms of communion and conditions of salvation, things which are not allowed to be such in the Bible, and contending for these things with a narrow, exclusive, sectarian spirit. The pharisees were bigots; who, while they omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment and the love of God, paid tithe of mint, anise and cummin, and insisted upon the observance of their ritual, as essential to acceptable worship. The catholics are bigots, and all who symbolize with them in sentiment and practice, because they unreasonably magnify forms and ceremonies and make connection with their

church essential to the pardon and acceptance with God, consigning all, who are not so connected, to uncovenanted mercy. So were the woman of Samaria and her countrymen, generally, bigots, because they believed that God would be worshipped nowhere acceptably but on Mount Gerizim, and were so intolerant in maintaining this dogma, that they bitterly hated their neighbors, the Jews, who worshipped God in Jerusalem. And never did bigotry appear to me more odious, or more contemptible, wicked and foolish, than when I saw it exemplified in the old Samaritan priest, a man about 65 years of age, and his son, who promises to be a worthy successor of his father. There they were, I saw them in their synagogue, the only two duly authorized priests in all the world, and the little company of their adherents, some 120 all told, the only true church on earth,--both priests and church having come down in the veritable line of succession from Aaron, and still having in their possession, the oldest and only true copy of the Pentateuch in the world, it having been written by Abishu, the son of Phineas, 3460 years ago, all of which is to be received as a part of essential faith. And when after an hour's hard ride up a steep mountain, over ravines, and precipices, and rocks, I stood on the spot, where, according to Samaritan faith, men must go to worship God, if they would wor ship him acceptably, I could not but exclaim, this is genuine bigotry; -here we have it,-it sends people away from the ever present Father, from the true spiritual worship, which he requires, and bids them climb to the tops of mountains, and there sets them down amid rocky desolation and barrenness, and feeds them with empty forms and ceremonies. There stood Ebal frowning over against me; and I could not but think, that all the curses which Moses commanded, should be denounced from thence, against those who should forsake the right ways of the Lord and go after idols, might justly fall, with a ten-fold weight, on such as pervert the simplicity and spirituality of Christian worship; teach for doctrines the commandments of men, and delude people with the vain conceit of superior sanctity and acceptableness to God, simply because they belong to a particular church, or pay their worship in a particular place, and according to particular forms. Let us turn now and

consider:

II. The manner in which our Saviour treated this bigoted woman of Samaria.

1. It is worthy of remark, that he entered into no dispute with her. At the very commencement of the interview, the woman started several topics which were of a controversial nature. She expressed her surprise that our Lord, being a Jew, should ask drink of her, who was a Samaritan. She questioned his superiority, both in respect to wisdom and power, to her ancestor Jacob. And she claimed that Gerizim, and not Jerusalem, was the place where men ought to worship. These several points our Lord evaded, as of little importance in themselves, and entirely irrelevant to the object he had in view, which was to convince the woman of her error and sinfulness, and bring her to repentance. She was not now in a state of mind to be convinced or

profited by disputation. She was narrow, sectarian, bigoted in her feelings. The difficulty in her case was more of the heart than of the head, and had our Lord entered into controversy with her on the points she suggested, the effect would have been to confirm her prejudice and inflame still more her ill temper. He therefore aims to draw her away from matters controversial and speculative, and to fix her attention upon the great spiritual truths of religion.

There are some persons with whom it does no good to dispute; and bigots are eminently of this character. They are diseased at heart. They see everything through a false medium. Their state of mind is such, as makes little things appear great, and great things little. And to attempt to convince such persons by argument, were as vain as to try to make blind men see, or deaf men hear by argument. The application, in such cases, should be to the heart rather than to the head. And this was the way in which our Saviour treated the woman of Samaria. Her mind was full of prejudice and bigotry respecting the external, non-essential parts of religion. To have disputed with her on these things, would have been like pouring oil on fire. The divine Teacher therefore avoided them, and led her to the knowledge of the truth, by another and more successful way.

2. There is something very noticeable in the mildness and gentleness with which our Saviour treated this woman. Her manner of addressing the stranger, who sat by the well side, was exceedingly arrogant and offensive. She refused to give him so much as a drink of water; held his character in disparagement as a Jew, and plainly intimated that he was wholly wrong on the question as to the place and manner of paying acceptable worship to God. Passing by all this, our blessed Lord, in the mildest and gentlest manner possible, goes on in his discourse with her, as though nothing improper had fallen from her lips, and gradually corrects her errors about the place and mode of worship, about forms and ceremonies, opening to her view the great spiritual truths of religion. He turns her attention away from rites and forms, and leads her to think of herself, her sins, her own personal need of grace to sanctify and save her; and all this he does in so kind and so serious a manner, that he soon began to win upon her confidence, to allay her prejudices, and she was prepared in the end to listen to him, first as a prophet, and then as the Messias, the Saviour of the world. Here we have a perfect model of the way in which we should treat persons who are under the influence of the spirit of bigotry and sectarianism. They can be won by kindness much easier than they can be convinced by argument. They have a heart to feel the attractions of love, though they may have no mind to see the light or feel the power of argument, especially when aimed at their prejudices. We can hope very little good from cold dry argument, employed against sectarians and bigots. And least of all can good be expected from railing at them, or calling them hard names. If any insist that Mount Gerizim is the place where God must be worshipped, or, which is virtually the same thing, if any insist that theirs is the only true church,

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