interpolation--that the twelfth verse, I think it is, ought to join
on to the fifty-second. The Alexandrian manuscript is the only one
of the three oldest that has it, and it is the latest of the three.
I did think once, but hastily, that it was our Lord's text for
saying I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, but it follows quite as well on
his offer of living water. One can easily see how the place would
appear a very suitable one to any presumptuous scribe who wished to
settle the question of where it should stand.--I wonder if St. John
told the lovely tale as something he had forgotten, after he had
finished dictating all the rest. Or was it well known to all the
evangelists, only no one of them was yet partaker enough of the
spirit of him who was the friend of sinners, to dare put it on
written record, thinking it hardly a safe story to expose to the
quarrying of men's conclusions? But it doesn't matter much: the tale
must be a true one. Only--to think of just this one story, of
tenderest righteousness, floating about like a holy waif through the
world of letters!--a sweet gray dove of promise that can find no
rest for the sole of his foot! Just this one story of all stories a
kind of outcast! and yet as a wanderer, oh, how welcome! Some
manuscripts, I understand, have granted it a sort of outhouse-shelter
at the end of the gospel of St. Luke. But it all matters nothing, so
long as we can believe it; and true it must be, it is so like him
all through. And if it does go wandering as a stray through the
gospels, without place of its own, what matters it so long as it
can find hearts enough to nestle in, and bring forth its young of
comfort!--Perhaps the woman herself told it, and, as with the woman
of Samaria, some would and some would not believe her.--Oh! the eyes
that met upon her! The fiery hail of scorn from those of the Pharisees--the
light of eternal sunshine from those of Jesus!--I was reading the
other day, in one of the old Miracle Plays, how each that looked on