As I have already pointed out, it is the precise reversal of the other.
What to Christ is 'day' to Paul is 'night.' What to Christ is 'night'
to Paul is 'day.' Now the first point that I would make is this, that
the future would never have been 'day' to Paul if Jesus had not gone
down into the darkness of the 'night.' I have said that there was only
one point of comparison in our Lord's mind between night and death. But
we may venture to extend the figure a little, and to say that the Light
went into the 'valley of the shadow of Death,' and lit it up from end
to end. The Life went into the palace of Death, and breathed life into
all there. There is a great picture by one of the old monkish masters,
on the walls of a Florentine convent, which represents the descent of
Jesus to that dim region of the dead. Around Him there is a halo of
light that shines into the gloomy corridor, up which the thronging
patriarchs and saints of the Old Dispensation are coming, with
outstretched hands of eager welcome and acceptance, to receive the
blessing. Ah! it is true, 'the people that walked in darkness have seen
a great Light; and to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of
death, unto them hath the Light shined.' Christ the Light has gone down
into the darkness, and what to Him was night He has made for us day.
Just as Scripture all but confines the name of _death_ to Christ's
experience upon the Cross, and by virtue of that experience softens it
down for the rest of us into the blessed image of _sleep_, so the
Master has turned the night of death into the dawning of the day.
Further, to the servant the brightness of that future day dimmed all
earth's garish glories into darkness. It was because Paul saw the
Beyond flaming with such lustre that the nearer distance to him seemed
to have sunk into gloom. Just as a man or other object between you and
the western sky when the sun is there will be all dark, so earth with
heaven behind it becomes a mere shadowy outline. The day that is beyond
outshines all the lustres and radiances of earth, and turns them into
darkness. You go into a room out of blazing tropical sunshine, and it
is all gloom and obscurity. He whose eyes are fixed on the day that is
to come will find that here he walks as one in the night.
And the brightness of that day, as well as the darkness of the present
night, directed the servant as to what he should be diligent in. Since
it is true that 'the day is at hand,' let us put on the armour of
light, and dress ourselves in garb fitting for it. Since it is true
that 'the night is far spent' let us put off the works of darkness.
III. And so that brings me to the last point, and that is the
combination of the Master's and the servant's thought, and the effect
that it should produce upon us.
It is not enough either for our hearts or our minds that we should say
'the night cometh when no man can work.' Life is day, but it is night
also. Death is night but it is dawning as well. We cannot understand
either the present or the future unless we link them together. That
death which is the cessation of activity in one aspect, is, for
Christ's servants, as truly as for Christ, the beginning of an activity
in a higher and nobler form. I do not believe in a heaven of rest,
meaning by that, inaction; I still less believe in a death which puts
an end to the activity of the human spirit. I believe that this world
is our school, our apprenticeship, the place where we learn our trade
and exercise our faculties, where we paint the picture, as it were,
which we offer when we desire to be admitted to the great guild of
artists, and according to the result of which, in the eye of the Judge,
is our place hereafter. What the Germans call 'proof pieces'—that is
the meaning of life. And though 'the night cometh when no man can
work,' the day cometh when the characters we have made ourselves here,
the habits we have cultivated and indulged in, the capacities we have
exercised, and the set and drift of all our activity upon earth, will
determine the work that we get to do there.
So then, stereoscoping these two thoughts, we get the solid image that
results from them both. And it teaches us not only diligence, and thus
supplies stimulus, but it determines the direction of our diligence,
and thus supplies guidance. We ought to be misers of our time and
opportunities. Jesus Christ said, 'I must work the work of Him that
sent Me while it is day; the night cometh.' How much more ought you and
I to say so? And some of us ought very specially to say it, and to feel
it, because the hour when we shall have to lay down our tools is
getting very near, and the shadows are lengthening. If you had been in
the fields in these summer evenings during the last few days, you would
have seen the haymakers at work with more and more diligence as the
evening drew on darker and darker. Dear friends, some of us are at the
eleventh hour. Let us fill it with diligent work. The night cometh.
But my texts not only stimulate to diligence, but they direct the
diligence. If it be that there is a day beyond, and that Christ's folk
are 'the children of the day,' then 'let us not sleep as do others, but
let us watch and be sober.' We have to cast ourselves on Him as our
Saviour, to love Him as our Lord and Friend, to take Him as our Pattern
and our Guide, our Help, our Light, and our Life. And then we shall
neither be deceived by life's garish splendours nor oppressed by its
gloom and its sorrow; we shall neither shrink from that last moment, as
a night of inaction, nor be too eager to cast off the burden of our
present work, but we shall cheerfully toil at what will prepare us for
'the day,' and the bell at night that rings us out of mill and factory
will not be unwelcome, for it will ring us in to higher work and nobler
service. The transition will be like one of those summer nights in the
Arctic circle, when the sun does not dip. Through a little thin film of
less light we shall pass into the perfect day, where 'the Lord God
Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof,' and 'there shall be no
more night.'
THE SIXTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL—THE BLIND MADE TO SEE, AND THE
SEEING MADE BLIND
'When Jesus had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of
the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
7. And said unto him, Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam, (which is by
interpretation, Sent). He went his way, therefore, and washed, and came
seeing.'—JOHN ix. 6, 7.
The proportionate length at which this miracle and its accompanying
effects are recorded, indicates very clearly the Evangelist's idea of
their relative importance. Two verses are given to the story of the
miracle; all the rest of the chapter to its preface and its issues. It
was a great thing to heal a man that was blind from his birth, but the
story of the gradual illumination of his spirit until it came to the
full light of the perception of Christ as the Son of God, was far more
to the Evangelist, and ought to be far more to us than giving the
outward eye power to discern the outward light.
The narrative has a prologue and an epilogue, and the true point of
view from which to look at it is found in the solemn words with which
our Lord closes the incident. 'For judgment am I come into this world,
that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be
made blind.'
So then the mere sign, important as it is, is the least thing that we
have to look at in our contemplations now.
I. We have here our Lord unveiling His deepest motives for bestowing an
unsought blessing.
It is remarkable, I think, that out of the eight miracles recorded in
this Gospel, there is only one in which our Lord responds to a request
to manifest His miraculous power; the others are all spontaneous.
In the other Gospels He heals sometimes because of the pleading of the
sufferer; sometimes because of the request of compassionate friends or
bystanders; sometimes unasked, because His own heart went out to those
that were in pain and sickness. But in John's Gospel, predominantly we
have the Son of God, who acts throughout as moved by His own deep
heart. That view of Christ reaches its climax in His own profound words
about His own laying down of His life: 'I came forth from the Father,
and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go unto the
Father.' So, not so much influenced by others as deriving motive and
impulse and law from Himself, He moves upon earth a fountain and not a
reservoir, the Originator and the Beginner of the blessings that He
bears.
And that is the point of view from which most strikingly the prologue
of our narrative sets forth His action in the miracle here. 'As Jesus
passed by,' says the story, 'He saw a man which was blind from his
birth.' He fixes His eye upon him. No cry from the blind man's lips
draws Him. He sits there unconscious of the kind eyes that were
fastened upon him. The disciples stand at Christ's side, and have no
share in His feelings. They ask Him to do nothing. To them the blind
man is—what? A theological problem. No trace of pity touches their
hearts. They do not even seem to have reckoned upon or expected
Christ's miraculous intervention. And that is a very remarkable feature
in the Gospels. At all events, they evidently do not expect it here;
but all that the sight of this lifelong sufferer does in them is to
raise a question, 'Who did sin; he or his parents?' Perhaps they do not
quite see to the bottom of the alternative that they are suggesting;
and we need not trouble ourselves to ask whether there was a full-blown
notion of the pre-existence of the man's soul in their minds as they
ask the question. Perhaps they remembered the impotent man to whom our
Lord said, 'Go and sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.' And
they may have thought that they had His sanction to the doctrine—as old
as Job's friends—that wherever there was great suffering there must
first have been great sin.
That is all that the sight of sorrow does for some people. It leads to
censorious judgments, or to mere idle and curious speculations. Christ
lets us see what it did for Him, and what it is meant to do for us.
'Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but he is born blind
that the works of God may be made manifest in him.' That is to say,
human sorrow is to be looked at by us as an opportunity for the
manifestation through us of God's mercy in relieving and stanching the
wounds through which the lifeblood is ebbing away. Do not stand coldly
curious or uncharitably censorious. Do not make miserable men
theological problems, but see in them a call for service. See in them
an opportunity for letting the light of God, so much of it as is in
you, shine from you, and your hands move in works of mercy.
And then the Master goes on to state still more distinctly the law
which dominated His life, and which ought to dominate ours: 'I must
work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh
when no man can work.' Then poor men's misery is an occasion for the
love of God manifesting itself. Yes. But the love of God manifests
itself through human media, through persons; and if we adopt the
reading of these words which you will find in the Revised Version, and
instead of saying '_I_ must work,' read '_We_ must work,' then we have
Christ extending the law which ruled over His own life to all His
followers, and making it supremely obligatory and binding upon each of
us. He for His part, as I have said, moves through this Gospel as the
Son of God, whose mercy, and all whose doings are self-originated. But
the other side of that is that He moves through this Gospel in the
humble attitude of filial obedience, ever recognising that the Father's
will is supreme in His life; and that He is bound, with an obligation
in which He rejoices, to do the will of Him that sent Him. The
consciousness of a mission, the sense of filial obedience, the joyful
surrender and harmonising of the will of the Son with the will of the
Father; these things were the secret of the Master's life.
And coupled with them, even in Him there was the consciousness that
time was short; and although beyond the Cross and the grave there
stretched for Him an eternity in which He would work for the blessing
of the world, yet the special work which He had to do, while wearing
the veil and weakness of flesh, had but few days and hours in which it
could be done. Therefore, as we ought to do, He worked under the
limitations of mortality, and recognised in the brevity of life another
call to eager and continuous service.
These were His motives which, in common with Him, we may share. But He
adds another in which we have no share; and declares the unique
consciousness which ever stirred Him to His self-manifesting and
God-manifesting acts: 'As long as I am in the world I am the Light of
the world.'
Thus, moved by sorrow, recognising in man's misery the dumb cry for
help, seeing in it the opportunity for the manifestation of the higher
mercy of God; taking all evil to be the occasion for a brighter display
of the love and the good which are divine; feeling that His one purpose
upon earth was to crowd the moments with obedience to the will, and
with the doing of the works of Him that sent Him; and possessing the
sole and strange consciousness that from His person streams out all the
light which illuminates the world—the Christ pauses before the
unconscious blind man, and looking upon the poor, useless eyeballs,
unaware how near light and sight stood, obeys the impulse that shapes
His whole life, 'and when He had spoken _thus_,' proceeds to the
strange cure.
II. So we come, in the next place, to consider Christ as veiling His
power under material means.
There is only one other instance in the Gospels where a miracle is
wrought in the singular fashion which is here employed, namely, the
healing of the deaf-mute recorded in Mark's Gospel, where, in like
manner, our Lord makes clay of the spittle, and anoints the ears of the
deaf man with the clay. The variety of method in our Lord's miracles
serves important purposes, as teaching us that the methods are nothing,
and that He moved freely amongst them all, the real cause in every case
being one and the same, the bare forth-putting of His will; and
teaching us further that in each specific case there were reasons in
the moral and religious condition of the persons operated upon for the
adoption of the specific means employed, which we of course have no
means of discovering. There is here, first then, healing by material
means. The clay had no power of healing; the water of Siloam had no
power of healing. The thing that healed was Christ's will, but He uses
these externals to help the poor blind man to believe that he is going
to be healed. He condescends to drape and veil His power in order that
the dim eye, unaccustomed to the light, may look upon that shadowed
representation of it when it could not gaze upon the pure brightness;
as an eye may look upon a shaded lamp which could not bear its
brilliance unsoftened and naked.
This healing by material means in order to accommodate Himself to the
weak faith which He seeks to evoke, and to strengthen thereby, is
parallel, in principle, to His own Incarnation, and to His appointment
of external rites and ordinances. Baptism, the Lord's Supper, a visible
Church, outward means of worship, and so on, all these come under that
same category. There is no life nor power in them except His will works
through them, but they are crutches and helps for a weak and
sense-bound faith to climb to the apprehension of the spiritual
reality. It is not the clay, it is not the water, it is not the Church,
the ordinances, the outward worship, the form of prayer, the
sacrament—it is none of these things that have the healing and the
grace in them. They are only ladders by which we may ascend to Him. So
let us neither presumptuously antedate the time when we shall be able
to do without them—the Heaven in 'which there is no Temple'—nor
grovellingly and superstitiously elevate them to a place of importance
and of power in the Christian life which Christ never meant them to
fill. He heals through material means; the true source of healing is
His own loving will.
Further, He heals at a distance. We have here a parallel with the story
of the nobleman's son at Capernaum, which we have already considered.
There, too, we have the same phenomenon, the healing power sent forth
from the Master, and operating far away from His corporeal personal
presence. This was a test of faith, as the use of the clay had been a
help to faith. Still He works His healing from afar, because to Him
there is neither near nor far. In His divine ubiquity, that Son of Man,
who in His glorified manhood is at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty, is here and everywhere where there are weakness and suffering
that turn to Him; ready to help, ready to bless and heal. 'Lo, I am
with you always, even unto the end of the world.'
Our Evangelist sees in the very name of that fountain in which the man
washed, a symbol which is not to be passed by. 'Go, wash in the Pool of
Siloam,' which, says John, 'is by interpretation, _Sent._' We have
heard already about the Pool of Siloam in this section of the Gospel.
In Chapter vii. we read, 'In the last day, that great day of the Feast,
Jesus stood and said, "If any man thirst let him come to Me and
drink."' These words were probably spoken on the last day of the Feast
of Tabernacles, on which one part of the ceremonial was the drawing,
with exuberant rejoicing, of water from the Pool of Siloam, and bearing
it up to the Temple. In these words Christ pointed to that fountain
which rises 'fast by the oracles of God,' and wells up from beneath the
hill, that on which the Temple is built, as being a symbol of Himself.
And here the Evangelist would have us suppose that, in like manner, the
very name which the fountain bore (whether as being an outgush from
beneath the Temple rock, or whether as being the gift of God) as
applicable to Himself. The lesson to be learned is that the fountain in
which we have to be cleansed 'from sin and from uncleanness,' whose
waters are the lotion that will give eyesight to the blind, the true
'fountain of perpetual youth,' which men have sought for in every land,
is Christ Himself. In Him we have the welling forth of the heart of
God, the water of life, the water of gladness, the immortal stream of
which 'whoso drinketh shall never thirst,' and which, touching the
blind eyeballs, washes away obscuration and gives new power of vision.
III. Then, still further, we have here our Lord suspending healing on
obedience.
'Go and wash.' As He said to the impotent man: 'Stretch forth thine
hand'; as He said to the paralytic in this Gospel: 'Take up thy bed and
walk'; so here He says, 'Go and wash.' And some friendly hand being
stretched out to the blind man, or he himself feeling his way over the
familiar path, he comes to the pool and washes, and returns seeing.
There is a double lesson there, on which I have no need to dwell. There
is, first, the general truth that healing is suspended by Christ on
compliance with His conditions. He does not simply say to any man, Be
whole. He could and did say so sometimes in regard to bodily healing.
But He cannot do so as regards the cure of our blind souls. To the
sin-sick and sin-blinded man He says, 'Thou shalt be whole, if'—or 'I
will make thee whole, provided that'—what?—provided that thou goest to
the fountain where He has lodged the healing power. The condition on
which sight comes to the blind is compliance with Christ's invitation,
'Come to Me; trust in Me; and thou shalt be whole.'
Then there is a special lesson here, and that is, Obedience brings
sight. 'If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Are
there any of you groping in darkness, compassed about with theological
perplexities and religious doubts? Obey what you know. Do what you see
clearly you ought to do. Bow your wills to the recognised truth. He who
has turned all his knowledge into action will get more knowledge as
soon as he needs it. 'Go and wash; and he went, and came seeing.'
IV. And now, lastly, we have here our Lord shadowing His highest work
as the Healer of blind souls.
It is impossible for me to enter upon that wonderfully dramatic and
instructive narrative which follows the account of the miracle, and
describe the controversies between the sturdy, quick-witted, candid,
blind man, and the narrow, bitter Pharisees. But just notice one or two
points.
The two parties are evidently represented as types of two contrasted
classes. The blind man stands for an example of honest ignorance,
knowing itself ignorant, and not to be coaxed or frightened or in any
way provoked to pretending to knowledge which it does not possess;
firmly holding by what it does know, and because conscious of its
little knowledge, therefore waiting for light and willing to be led.
Hence he is at once humble and sturdy, docile and independent, ready to
listen to any voice which can really teach, and formidably quick to
prick with wholesome sarcasm the inflated claims of mere official
pretenders. The Pharisees, on the other hand, are sure that they know
everything that can be known about anything in the region of religion
and morality, and in their absolute confidence of their absolute
possession of the truth, in their blank unconsciousness that it was
more than their official property and stock-in-trade, in their complete
incapacity to discern the glory of a miracle which contravened
ecclesiastical proprieties and conventionalities, in their contempt for
the ignorance which they were responsible for and never thought of
enlightening, in their cruel taunt directed against the man's calamity,
and in their swift resort to the weapon of excommunication of one whom
it was much easier to cast out than to answer, are but too plain a type
of a character which is as ready to corrupt the teachers of the Church
as of the synagogue.
One cannot but notice how constantly the phrase 'We know' occurs. The
parents of the man use it thrice. The Pharisees have it on their lips
in their first interview with him: 'We know that this man is a sinner.'
He answers, declining to affirm anything about the character of the Man
Jesus, because he, for his part, 'knows not,' but standing firmly by
the solid reality which he 'knows,' in a very solid fashion, that his
eyes have been opened. So we have the first encounter between knowledge
which is ignorant, and ignorance which knows, to the manifest victory
of the latter. Again, in the second round, they try to overbear the
man's cool sarcasm with their vehement assertion of knowledge that God
spake to Moses, but by the admission that even their knowledge did not
reach to the determination of the question of the origin of Jesus'
mission, lay themselves open to the sudden thrust of keen-eyed, honest
humility's sharp rapier-like retort. 'Herein is a marvellous thing,'
that you _Know-alls_, whose business it is to know where a professed
miracle-worker comes from, 'know not from whence He is, and yet He hath
opened mine eyes.' 'Now we know' (to use your own words) 'that God
heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth
His will, him He heareth.'
Then observe how, on both sides, a process is going on. The man is
getting more and more light at each step. He begins with 'a Man which
is called Jesus.' Then he gets to a 'prophet,' then he comes to 'a
worshipper of God, and one that does His will.' Then he comes to, 'If
this man were not of God,' in some very special sense, 'He could do
nothing.' These are his own reflections, the working out of the
impression made by the fact on an honest mind; and because he had so
used the light which he had, therefore Jesus gives him more, and finds
him with the question, 'Dost thou believe on the Son of God?' Then the
man who had shown himself so strong in his own convictions, so
independent, and hard to cajole or coerce, shows himself now all docile
and submissive, and ready to accept whatever Jesus says: 'Lord, who is
He, that I might believe on Him?' That was not credulity. He already
knew enough of Christ to know that he ought to trust Him. And to his
docility there is given the full revelation; and he hears the words
which Pharisees and unrighteous men were not worthy to hear: 'Thou hast
both _seen_ it is He that talketh with thee.' Then intellectual
conviction, moral reliance, and the utter prostration and devotion of
the whole man bow him at Christ's feet. 'Lord, I believe; and He
worshipped Him.'
There is the story of the progress of an honest, ignorant soul that
knew itself blind, into the illumination of perfect vision.
And as he went upwards, so steadily and tragically, downwards went the
others. For they had light and they would not look at it; and it
blasted and blinded them. They had the manifestation of Christ, and
they scoffed and jeered at it, and turned their backs upon it, and it
became a curse to them; falling not like dew but like vitriol on their
spirits, blistering, not refreshing.
Therefore Christ pronounces their fate, and sums up the story in the
solemn two-edged sentence: 'For judgment am I come into the world, that
they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made
blind.'
The purpose of His coming is not to judge, but to save. But if men will
not let Him save, the effect of His coming will be to harm. Therefore,
His coming will separate men into two parts, as a magnet will draw all
the iron filings out of a heap and leave the brass. He comes not to
judge, but His coming does judge. He is set for the rise or for the
fall of men, and is 'a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the
heart.'
Light has a twofold effect. It is torture to the diseased eye; it is
gladdening to the sound one. Christ is the light, as He is also both
the power of seeing and the thing seen. Therefore, it cannot but be
that His shining upon men's hearts shall judge them, and shall either
enlighten or darken.
We all have eyes—the organs by which we may see 'the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God.' We have all blinded ourselves by our
sin. Christ is come to show us God, to be the light by which we see
God, and to strengthen and restore our faculty of seeing Him. If you
welcome Him, and take Him into your hearts, He will be at once light
and eyesight to you. But if you turn away from Him He will be blindness
and darkness to you. He comes to pour eyesight on the blind, but He
comes therefore also, most assuredly, to make still blinder those who
do not know themselves to be blind, and conceit themselves to be
clear-sighted. 'I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'
They who see themselves to be blind, who know themselves to be
ignorant, the lowly who recognise their sinfulness and misery and
helplessness, and turn in their sore need to Christ, will be led by
paths of growing knowledge and blessedness to the perfect day where
their strengthened vision will be able to see light in the blaze which
to us now is darkness. They who say 'I see,' and know not that they are
miserable and blind, nor hearken to His counsel to 'anoint their eyes
with eye salve that they may see,' will have yet another film drawn
over their eyes by the shining of the light which they reject, and will
pass into darkness where only enough of light and of eyesight remain to
make guilt. Jesus Christ is for us light and vision. Trust to Him, and
your eyes will be blessed because they see God. Turn from Him and
Egyptian darkness will settle on your soul. 'To him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be
taken away.'