'And Jesus cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto Him,
and besought Him to touch him. 23. And He took the blind man by the
hand, and led him out of the town; and when He had spit on his eyes,
and put His hands upon Him, He asked him if he saw ought. 24. And he
looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25. After that He
put His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was
restored, and saw every man clearly.'--Mark viii. 22-25.
This miracle, which is only recorded by the Evangelist Mark, has about
it several very peculiar features. Some of these it shares with one
other of our Lord's miracles, which also is found only in this Gospel,
and which occurred nearly about the same time--that miracle of healing
the deaf and dumb man recorded in the previous chapter. Both of them
have these points in common: that our Lord takes the sufferer apart
and works His miracle in privacy; that in both there is an abundant
use of the same singular means--our Lord's touch and the saliva upon
His finger; and that in both there is the urgent injunction of entire
secrecy laid upon the recipient of the benefit.
But this miracle had another peculiarity in which it stands absolutely
alone, and that is that the work is done in stages; that the power
which at other times has but to speak and it is done, here seems to
labour, and the cure comes slowly; that in the middle Christ pauses,
and, like a physician trying the experiment of a drug, asks the
patient if any effect is produced, and, getting the answer that some
mitigation is realised, repeats the application, and perfect recovery
is the result.
Now, how unlike that is to all the rest of Christ's miraculous working
we do not need to point out; but the question may arise, What is the
meaning, and what the reason, and what the lessons of this unique and
anomalous form of miraculous working? It is to that question that I
wish to turn now; for I think that the answer will open up to us some
very precious things in regard to that great Lord, the revelation of
whose heart and character is the inmost and the loftiest meaning of
both His words and His works.
I take these three points of peculiarity to which I have referred: the
privacy, the strange and abundant use of means veiling the miraculous
power, and the gradual, slow nature of the cure. I see in them these
three things: Christ isolating the man that He would heal; Christ
stooping to the sense-bound nature by using outward means; and Christ
making His power work slowly, to keep abreast of the man's slow faith.
I. First, then, here we have Christ isolating the man whom He wanted
to heal.
Now, there may have been something about our Lord's circumstances and
purposes at the time of this miracle which accounted for the great
urgency with which at this period He impressed secrecy upon all around
Him. What that was it is not necessary for us to inquire here, but
this is worth noticing, that in obedience to this wish, on His own
part, for privacy at the time, He covers over with a veil His
miraculous working, and does it quietly, as one might almost say, in a
corner. He never sought to display His miraculous working; here He
absolutely tries to hide it. That fact of Christ's taking pains to
conceal His miracle carries in it two great truths--first, about the
purpose and nature of miracles in general, and second, about His
character--as to each of which a few words may be said.
This fact, of a miracle done in intended secrecy, and shrouded in deep
darkness, suggests to us the true point of view from which to look at
the whole subject of miracles.
People say they were meant to be attestations of His divine mission.
Yes, no doubt that is true partially; but that was never the sole nor
even the main purpose for which they were wrought; and when any one
asked Jesus Christ to work a miracle for that purpose only, He rebuked
the desire and refused to gratify it. He wrought His miracles, not
coldly, in order to witness to His mission, but every one of them was
the token, because it was the outcome, of His own sympathetic heart
brought into contact with human need. And instead of the miracles of
Jesus Christ being cold, logical proofs of His mission, they were all
glowing with the earnestness of a loving sympathy, and came from Him
at sight of sorrow as naturally as rays beam out from the sun.
Then, on the other hand, the same fact carries with it, too, a lesson
about His character. Is not He here doing what He tells us to do; 'Let
not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth'? He dares not wrap
His talent in a napkin, He would be unfaithful to His mission if He
hid His light under a bushel. All goodness 'does good by stealth,'
even if it does not 'blush to find it fame'--and that universal mark
of true benevolence marked His. He had to solve in His human life what
we have to solve, the problem of keeping the narrow path between
ostentation of powers and selfish concealment of faculty; and He
solved it thus, 'leaving us an example that we should follow in His
steps.'
But that is somewhat aside from the main purpose to which I intended
to turn in these first remarks. Christ did not invest the miracle with
any of its peculiarities for His own sake only. All that is singular
about it, will, I think, find its best explanation in the condition
and character of the subject, the man on whom it was wrought. What
sort of a man was he? Well, the narrative does not tell us much, but
if we use our historical imagination and our eyes we may learn
something about him. First he was a Gentile; the land in which the
miracle was wrought was the half-heathen country on the east side of
the Sea of Galilee. In the second place, it was other people that
brought him; he did not come of his own accord. Then again, it is
their prayer that is mentioned, not his--he asked nothing.
You see him standing there hopeless, listless; not believing that this
Jewish stranger is going to do anything for him; with his impassive
blind face glowing with no entreaty to reinforce his companions'
prayers. And suppose he was a man of that sort, with no expectation of
anything from this Rabbi, how was Christ to get at him? It is of no
use to speak to him. His eyes are shut, so cannot see the sympathy
beaming in His face. There is one thing possible--to lay hold of Him
by the hand; and the touch, gentle, loving, firm, says this at least:
'Here is a man that has some interest in me, and whether He can do
anything or not for me, He is going to try something.' Would not that
kindle an expectation in him? And is it not in parable just exactly
what Jesus Christ does for the whole world? Is not that act of His by
which He put out His hand and seized the unbelieving limp hand of the
blind man that hung by his side, the very same in principle as that by
which He 'taketh hold of the seed of Abraham,' and is made like to His
brethren? Are not the mystery of the Incarnation and the meaning of it
wrapped up as in a germ in that little simple incident, 'He put out
His hand and touched him'?
Is there not in it, too, a lesson for all you good-hearted Christian
men and women, in all your work? If you want to do anything for your
afflicted brethren, there is only one way to do it-to come down to
their level and get hold of their hands, and then there is some chance
of doing them good. We must be content to take the hands of beggars if
we are to make the blind to see.
And then, having thus drawn near to the man, and established in his
heart some dim expectation of something coming, He gently led him away
out of the little village. I wonder no painter has ever painted that,
instead of repeating _ad nauseam_ two or three scenes out of the
Gospels. I wonder none of them has ever seen what a parable it is--the
Christ leading the blind man out into solitude before He can say to
him, 'Behold!' How, as they went, step by step, the poor blind eyes
not telling the man where they were going, or how far away he was
being taken from his friends, his conscious dependence upon this
stranger would grow! How he would feel more and more at each step, 'I
am at His mercy; what is He going to do with me?' And how thus there
would be kindled in his heart some beginnings of an expectation, as
well as some surrendering of himself to Christ's guidance! These two
things, the expectation and the surrender, have in them, at all
events, some faint beginnings and rude germs of the highest faith, to
lead up to which is the purpose of all that Christ here does.
And is not that what He does for us all? Sometimes by sorrows,
sometimes by sick-beds, sometimes by shutting us out from chosen
spheres of activity, sometimes by striking down the dear ones at our
sides, and leaving us lonely in the desert-is He not saying to us in a
thousand ways, 'Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place'? As
Israel was led into the wilderness that God might 'speak to her
heart,' so often Christ draws us aside, if not by outward providences
such as these, yet by awaking in us the solemn sense of personal
responsibility and making us feel our solitude, that He may lead us to
feel His all-sufficient companionship.
Ah! brethren, here is a lesson from all this--if you wish Jesus Christ
to give you His highest gifts and to reveal to you His fairest beauty,
you must be alone with Him. He loves to deal with single souls. Our
lives, many of them, can never be outwardly alone. We are jammed up
against one another in such a fashion, and the hurry and pressure of
city life is so great with us all, that it is often impossible for us
to secure outward secrecy and solitude. But a man maybe alone in a
crowd; the heart may be gathered up into itself, and there may be a
still atmosphere round about us in the shop and in the market and
amongst the busy ways of men, in which we and Christ shall be alone
together. Unless there be, I do not think any of us will see the King
in His beauty or the far-off land. 'I was left alone, and I saw this
great vision,' is the law for all true beholding.
So, dear brethren, try to feel how awful this earthly life of ours is
in its necessary solitude; that each of us by himself must shape out
his own destiny, and make his own character; that every unit of the
swarms upon our streets is a unit that has to face the solemn facts of
life for and by itself; that alone we live, that alone we shall die;
that alone we shall have to give account of ourselves before God, and
in the solitude let the hand of your heart feel for His hand that is
stretched out to grasp yours, and listen to Him saying, 'Lo! I am with
you always, even to the end of the world.' There was no dreariness in
the solitude when it was _Christ_ that 'took the blind man by the hand
and led him out of the city.'
II. We have Christ stooping to a sense-bound nature by the use of
material helps.
No doubt there was something in the man, as I have said, which made it
advisable that these methods should be adopted. If he were the sort of
person that I have described, slow of faith, not much caring about the
possibility of cure, and not having much hope that any cure would come
to pass--then we can see the fitness of the means adopted: the hand
laid upon the eyes, the finger, possibly moistened with saliva,
touching the ball, the pausing to question, the repeated application.
These make a ladder by which his hope and confidence might climb to
the apprehension of the blessing. And that points to a general
principle of the divine dealings. God stoops to a feeble faith, and
gives to it outward things by which it may rise to an apprehension of
spiritual realities.
Is not that the meaning of the whole complicated system of Old
Testament revelation? Is not that the meaning of the altars, and
priests, and sacrifices, and the old cumbrous apparatus of the Mosaic
law? Was it not all a picture-book in which the infant eyes of the
race might see in a material form deep spiritual realities? Was not
that the meaning and explanation of our Lord's parabolic teaching? He
veils spiritual truth in common things that He may reveal it by common
things--taking fishermen's boats, their nets, a sower's basket, a
baker's dough, and many another homely article, and finding in them
the emblems of the loftiest truth.
Is not that the meaning of His own Incarnation? It is of no use to
talk to men about God--let them see Him; no use to preach about
principles--give them the facts of His life. Revelation does not
consist in the setting forth of certain propositions about God, but in
the exhibition of the acts of God in a human life.
'And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds.'
And still further, may we not say that this is the inmost meaning and
purpose of the whole frame of the material universe? It exists in
order that, as a parable and a symbol, it may proclaim the things that
are unseen and eternal. Its depths and heights, its splendours and its
energies are all in order that through them spirits may climb to the
apprehension of the 'King, eternal, immortal, invisible,' and the
realities of His spiritual kingdom.
So in regard to all the externals of Christianity, forms of worship,
ordinances, and so on--all these, in like manner, are provided in
condescension to our weakness, in order that by them we may be lifted
above themselves; for the purpose of the Temple is to prepare for the
time and the place where the seer 'saw no temple therein.' They are
but the cups that carry the wine, the flowers whose chalices bear the
honey, the ladders by which the soul may climb to God Himself, the
rafts upon which the precious treasure may be floated into our hearts.
If Christ's touch and Christ's saliva healed, it was not because of
anything in them; but because He willed it so; and He Himself is the
source of all the healing energy. Therefore, let us keep these
externals in their proper place of subordination, and remember that in
Him, not in them, lies the healing power; and that even Christ's touch
may become the object of superstitious regard, as it was when that
poor woman came through the crowd to lay her finger on the hem of His
garment, thinking that she could bear away a surreptitious blessing
without the conscious outgoing of His power. He healed her because
there was a spark of faith in her superstition, but she had to I earn
that it was not the hem of the garment but the loving will of Christ
that cured, in order that the dross of superstitious reliance on the
outward vehicle might be melted away, and the pure gold of faith in
His love and power might remain.
III. Lastly, we have Christ accommodating the pace of His power to the
slowness of the man's faith.
The whole story, as I have said, is unique, and especially this part
of it--'He put His hands upon him, and asked him if he saw aught.' One
might have expected an answer with a little more gratitude in it, with
a little more wonder in it, with a little more emotion in it. Instead
of these it is almost surly, or at any rate strangely reticent-a
matter-of-fact answer to the question, and there an end. As our
Revised Version reads it better: 'I see men, for I behold them as
trees walking.' Curiously accurate! A dim glimmer had come into the
eye, but there is not yet distinctness of outline nor sense of
magnitude, which must be acquired by practice. The eye has not yet
been educated, and it was only because these blurred figures were in
motion that he knew they were not trees. 'After that He put His hands
upon his eyes and made him look up,' or, as the Revised Version has it
with a better reading, 'and he looked steadfastly,' with an eager
straining of the new faculty to make sure that he had got it, and to
test its limits and its perfection. 'And he was restored and saw all
things clearly.'
Now I take it that the worthiest view of that strangely protracted
process, broken up into two halves by the question that is dropped
into the middle, is this, that it was determined by the man's faith,
and was meant to increase it. He was healed slowly because he believed
slowly. His faith was a condition of his cure, and the measure of it
determined the measure of the restoration; and the rate of the growth
of his faith settled the rate of the perfecting of Christ's work on
him. As a rule, faith in His power to heal was a condition of Christ's
healing, and that mainly because our Lord would rather make men
believing than sound of body. They often wanted only the outward
miracle, but He wanted to make it the means of insinuating a better
healing into their spirits. And so, not that there was any necessary
connection between their faith and the exercise of His miraculous
power, but in order that He might bless them with His best gifts, He
usually worked on the principle 'According to your faith be it unto
you.' And here, as a nurse or a mother with her child might do, He
keeps step with the little steps, and goes slowly because the man goes
slowly.
Now, both the gradual process of illumination and the rate of that
process as determined by faith, are true for us. How dim and partial a
glimmer of light comes to many a soul at the outset of the Christian
life! How little a new convert knows about God and self and the starry
truths of His great revelation! Christian progress does not consist in
seeing new things, but in seeing the old things more clearly: the same
Christ, the same Cross, only more distinctly and deeply apprehended,
and more closely incorporated into my very being. We do not grow away
from Him, but we grow into knowledge of Him. The first lesson that we
get is the last lesson that we shall learn, and He is the 'Alpha' at
the beginning, and the 'Omega' at the end of that alphabet, the
letters of which make up our knowledge for earth and heaven.
But then let me remind you that just in the measure in which you
expect blessing of any kind, illumination and purifying and help of
all sorts from Jesus Christ, just in that measure will you get it. You
can limit the working of Almighty power, and can determine the rate at
which it shall work on you. God fills the water-pots 'to the brim,'
but not beyond the brim; and if, like the woman in the Old Testament
story, we stop bringing vessels, the oil will stop flowing. It is an
awful thing to think that we have the power, as it were, to turn a
stopcock, and so increase or diminish, or cut off altogether, the
supply of God's mercy and Christ's healing and cleansing love in our
hearts. You will get as much of God as you want and no more. The
measure of your desire is the measure of your capacity, and the
measure of your capacity is the measure of God's gift. 'Open thy mouth
wide and I will fill it!' And if your faith is heavily shod and steps
slowly, His power and His grace will step slowly along with it,
keeping rank and step. 'According to your faith shall it be unto you.'
Ah! dear friends, 'Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in
yourselves.' Desire Him to help and bless you, and He will do it.
Expect Him to do it, and He will do it. Go to Him like the other blind
man and say to Him--'Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me, that
I may receive my sight,' and He will lay His hand upon you, and at any
rate a glimmer will come, which will grow in the measure of your
humble, confident desire, until at last He takes you by the hand and
leads you out of this poor little village of a world and lays His
finger for a brief moment of blindness upon your eyes and asks you if
you see aught. Then you will look up, and the first face that you will
behold will be His, whom you saw 'as through a glass darkly' with your
dim eyes in this twilight world.
May that be your experience and mine, through His mercy!