There was a peculiarity of sorrow in that feeling of Paul's when he said, " Not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." He did not come behind any, either in service or in suffering for Christ, but ah! he could not forgive himself that, before grace came, he had persecuted the church. When he had learned to see God's thought of marvelous wisdom about the church, the heavenly bride, and to see its beauty as the expression of God's thought, how could he forgive himself, or ever get rid of the recollection that he had been a persecutor of it "This beautiful thing, this church, the body of Christ, and I, miserable thing, in ignorance of God's bright glorious luminous thought, I, like a very blood-hound of Satan, would have hunted it down in the hope of utterly crushing it." His soul was bowed down so low, he had got his face thoroughly in the dust, with the sense of his own unworthiness and nothingness, and of God being everything. If any looked at him, he said, "Do not look at me, I am less than the least of all saints, not meet to be called an apostle; and am I the man picked out to make known the mystery? I know that I belong to the body of Christ, but I do not know where to put myself so as to meet my thought of self-I would go down lower than all."
How all that is in Christ just came out to suit such a one as that poor thing at the well of Samaria! How came He to be there when she came? How came He to be on earth? Why did He come out of heaven at all? There is no other answer save the father's in regard to the prodigal: " It was meet and right,"; I cannot ask why God should show mercy-He declares, " I will have mercy on whom I will." Blessed be His name He has a character of His own, and He will show it forth in having mercy on poor sinners. How? Ah, by their being justified by the Son of His love! If a builder, there must be a foundation-stone. His owns Son must come off the throne, out of glory, if poor sinners are to go up into it and oh! the willingness of that Son!
" I have meat to eat that ye know not of." In His soul there was a deep need that went far beyond the need of the body, and He had been meeting that need of His soul, while the disciples were looking after bits of bread for the body. He hungered and thirsted till the work His Father had sent Him to do was done thoroughly. And ah! blessed Lord! because Thy Father is seeking worshippers, Thou canst turn any poor sinner into a worshipper as Thou didst that poor woman. When one thinks of that woman, Where is she now? absent from the body, present with the Lord, and when He comes forth, there will she be with Him, the possessor of eternal life, a monument from first to last of redeeming love, to the eternal praise of God.