There are a number of important lessons that we may profitably dwell upon from this interview between Christ and that woman of Samaria. We shall restrict ourselves to the most outstanding one. Our Lord teaches us here the nature of salvation; He compares it to water. It is noteworthy and most suggestive that whatever in the material world is most useful and highly valuable to man is also the most common and most abundant. Things which can, without serious loss and injury to any one, be dispensed with, or which serve merely or mainly to give pleasure, such as gold, diamonds, and jewels, exquisite foreign fruit, these alone are rare, the property of a few. But what all men need, and most largely ministers to their comfort and enjoyment,--the wholesome food, the pure, refreshing water, the air, and the light,--these are spread out in free, unstinted store before rich and poor, young and old, one and all.--But besides this material world there is another with which we have to do, an unseen spiritual world, in which our souls are living and breathing, and there the same law obtains. God has abundantly supplied us with what we need. Two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water. You find water all over and everywhere, in oceans, rivers, springs, wells, sufficient to supply all the wants of man. So, too, there is not a meager quantity, but an abundance of living water. If all the human beings who have ever lived upon this earth could come to this heavenly Fountain in a body, there would be water enough and to spare, and it is everywhere and for everybody. It is for Americans, for Europeans, for the inhabitants of Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea. There never will be a diminution of its vast and boundless supply. Nor will God permit any barrier to hedge it in.