Jacob’s Well is one of the few spots undoubtedly rendered sacred by the feet of Christ. When the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was baptizing more disciples than John, Jesus left Judea for Galilee, “and he must needs pass through Samaria. So he cometh to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, and Jacob’s Well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water,” &c. (John iv. 1-7). This woman, we suppose, came from Sychar; but an unaccountable confusion has grown up between Sychar and Shechem. If the woman had come from Shechem she would have to carry her pitcher a mile and a half to the well, passing abundant streams on the way--an apparently needless trouble. But the early Christians used to place Sychar a mile east of Shechem, and our explorers agree with Canon Williams and others in identifying it with the village of ’Askar, which stands within sight of the well, about half a mile distant, on the slope of Ebal. Yet the Crusaders confounded Sychar with Shechem, misleading everybody who came after; the error lasting to our own time, and reappearing even in carefully-written books. The question arises, why Jesus on this occasion must needs go through Samaria? It has been customary to reply that it was because Samaria lay right across his path in going from Judea to Galilee. But this does not satisfy us when we know that it was a frequent thing to cross the Jordan and travel by the eastern route, because the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. I was one day reading the Gospel of St John very carefully in order to compare notes with a friend, and I was struck with the meaning implied in Christ’s expression, “One soweth and another reapeth.” Jesus says to his disciples, “Say not ye, there are yet four months and then cometh the harvest.” We judge that he is pointing to the rich cornfield, where the valley opens out into the Plain of _Mukhnah_; he remarks that the corn is not ripe yet, and the harvest is not due. Yet he says, “Behold! Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest. He that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.” He is now referring to the spiritual harvest: the people are flocking out of the town to listen to his teaching, they are favourably disposed and ready to be converted. Now, why should they be so ready to listen, seeing that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans? Christ himself supplies the answer when he says, “Herein is the saying true, ‘One soweth and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not laboured; others have laboured, and ye are entered into their labour.’” He cannot mean that he is sowing seed now, by his preaching, for his disciples to reap a harvest of conversions by-and-bye, for he says, “The fields are white already unto harvest. Lift up your eyes and