Jacob's Well
Going northward to Judea of Galilee Jesus “must needs go through Samaria.” On this journey He came to Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph, where Jacob’s Well is still found. Here we are upon undisputed ground. According to Dean Stanley it is, perhaps, the only place the identity of which is beyond all question. On the 3rd of May, 1894, the artist and one of the editors reached this place about three o’clock in the afternoon. We came, doubtless, over the very road on horseback that our Savior traveled with His disciples in December, A. D. 27. Here the writer read the fourth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Here the conversation took place between Jesus and the woman of Samaria. We could look to Mount Gerizim on our left and remember the temple to which the woman pointed when she said: “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain.” Jacob’s Well now belongs to the Greek Church. The keeper of the church wanted us to write our names in a book and make a contribution to the building of a new church over the well. We told him that we did not think a church ought to be built there at all. He seemed to think that this was a cheap argument to avoid giving him money. The well is now seventy-five feet deep and seven feet six inches in breadth. The diameter of the opening is seventeen and a half feet. A ruined vault stands above the well twenty feet long, ten feet broad and six feet high. The pieces of broken marble you see in the front belong to some ancient church. It was here by this lonely well that Jesus told to a woman and to all the world the story of the true relationship between God and man.
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