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I. It was a roadside conversation, an "accidental" interview. And yet in less time than an ordinary religious service HE HAS TOLD MANKIND THREE SECRETS.

1. What rest or peace is for every unsatisfied heart.

2. Who it is that knows these hearts through and through.

3. What God is, and how He may be found.

4. These are secrets, because for four thousand years the loftiest intellects had been striving to find them out. Prophets and kings, Solomons and Platos, desired to see these things, and did not.

II. WHERE SHOULD WE SAY THIS REVELATION WOULD BE MADE,

1. In some crowded church, advertised beforehand, with thousands of people and a popular orator?

2. In some lecture-hall with sharp-witted students stimulated by some master brain?

3. Notice that the occasion was commonplace. The teacher sat on the stones of a wayside well. The audience was one woman, not respectable. Men of the world that day were about their business. Fortunes were building and wasting. Rome was ruling. Athens was carving and painting and making orations. Jerusalem was garnishing the sepulchres of the righteous, and devouring widows' houses. But in one still spot two people were talking together of things which have helped to revolutionize the world.

III. WHILE THUS ENGAGED THE TEACHER'S ATTENTION WAS DISTRACTED. The disciples came and asked Him to eat. Then were repeated instances when, at the moment He needed sympathy most, those around Him went on chattering about superficial trifles, misunderstanding His teaching and His life. But Christ's patience always triumphed. He simply announces —

1. The fact that He had meat they knew not of.

(1) He does not mean that He was not in natural wants and exactly like ourselves. Honest hunger is no more disgraceful than honest riches. He knew that some of the most beneficent and beautiful impulses are associated with eating and drinking. He made both sacramental signs. Christianity is not the killing out or mutilating of any faculty; it is to use everything purely, unselfishly, faithfully, and in the name of the Lord Jesus.

2. While Christ would not sunder what God hath joined together, the hungering body and the immaterial soul, yet His mission is to bring the two into their right relation, and set the one over the other as its master. Eating and drinking are well enough in their place and time, but man shall not live by bread only. It is something higher that makes life worth living — the life and work of Christ.

3. Why should this be called meat? Food does two things.

(1) It satisfies uneasy desire: so Christ satisfies a desire which is the hunger of the soul. You say many do not feel it, or they would give up their selfish way and turn to God. But

(a)  although many people have lost the longing for a purer life by indulgence, they had it once.

(b)  The desire for better things is stronger in finer natures than in coarse.

(c)  Do we not all want something deeply, and are miserable when we cannot get relief.

(d)  The restless heart needs to be shown the secret of its discontent, and Christ comes into the world to show it.

(e)  Ask yourselves if you do not sometimes feel it.

(2) Besides the craving filled and the sense of relish, there is actual nourishment. At first it seems as if Christian service were all giving and spending. But as you go on you take more than you give. A good life is continually strengthened by living it. All we give away for a good object enriches us.

4. Christ further tells us that the life of love and duty is the carrying out of God's plan.

5. Christ uplifts the ideal of a "finished" life and work. "Finished," because to the last stroke spent and the last breath drawn Christ gives it power and grace. No matter how long life is or how short if it is faithful. No matter where death is, if within us is the life of Him who liveth evermore.

(Bp. Huntington.)

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KJV: Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?

WEB: "Come, see a man who told me everything that I did. Can this be the Christ?"