REVEREND GEORGE HUTCHISON, who was an eminent and able minister of the Gospel of Christ in Edinburgh during the 17th century, wrote, among other edifying publications, an exposition of the Gospel of John. Upon Chapter 4, verse 14—”But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”—he wrote as follows: paragraph 10—”As the truly godly have no term-day of religion but eternity, and their desire is to keep fresh till the end, so where the Spirit of Christ is, he will still be venting of his virtue and riches from day to day, and letting out more and more to the sinner till eternity come, wherein all the banks of incapacity, sin, distance, ignorance, mortality, etc., being broken down, and the windows of heaven being opened, this stream and well becometh an ocean, and grace, smothered here under corruption and infirmity, gets leave to expatiate itself in glory; for it shall be “A well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
A copy of this Exposition of the Gospel of John, which formerly belonged to the late Rev. James S. Sinclair, Glasgow, lies open before us as we write, at the page where the above-quoted passage occurs. Upon the margin opposite this passage is written in pencil, by the late Mr. Sinclair, the one word, “Beautiful.”