narrative. It is the true order of human life. After we have listened
to the divinest discourse, there is a sense of vacancy in the heart.
We feel as if we were out of communion with the business and misery of
the world,--as if the words had not proved themselves till they could
be brought into collision and conflict with these. When we are in the
midst of action, we want to know that it is not merely mechanical
action,--that it is in conformity with some principle, and springs out
of a principle. When Jesus has finished His discourse with the Jews,
by assuming a name which lies beneath all discourse,--when they have
finished their arguments by taking up stones to cast at Him,--He meets
a man blind from his birth. He proceeds at once to do him good. But
before He can enter upon that work, He must encounter a metaphysical
doubt which has occurred to the fishermen who are walking with Him. A
metaphysical doubt to fishermen! Yes; and if you go into the garrets
and cellars of London, you will have metaphysical doubts presented to
you by men immeasurably more ignorant than those fishermen were, even
before Jesus called them; the very doubts which the schools are
occupied with, only taking a living, practical form. Unless you can
cause men not to be metaphysical beings--that is to say, unless you
can take from them all which separates them from the beasts that
perish--they must have these doubts. Thanks be to God, He awakens
them! And thanks be to God, He, and not priests and doctors, must
satisfy them for every creature whom He has made in His image!
The doubt which troubled the disciples is one that has exercised all
generations--none more than our own. '_Master, who did sin, this man,
or his parents, that he was born blind?_' 'He came into the world
under this curse. Was it for some sin he committed in another world,
in some older state of existence? or is this an illustration of the
doctrine, asserted in the second commandment? Are the sins of the
father and mother visited on the child?' The former hypothesis has
always connected itself closely with the sense of immortality in man.
'Am I merely to be hereafter? Does not the future imply a past? Do not
shadows of that past pursue me? Can I interpret the facts of memory if
I deny its existence?' The second doctrine is not more asserted in the
law than it is justified by experience. The facts from which it is
deduced belong to physiology as much at least as to theology. Every
one who thinks of hereditary sickness and insanity confesses them and
trembles.
'_Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but
that the works of God should be made manifest in him._'
A dogmatist who ventured, on the strength of this answer, to say that
the bodily condition of this particular man, or of any man, had not
been affected by the misdoings of his parents,--who should venture
even to pronounce the other opinion respecting a pre-existent state a
false and heretical one,--would speedily find himself at fault. To be
consistent, he must take the sentence according to the letter of it,
and say that the parents of this man had not sinned at all before he
was born. One who really reverences our Lord's words will not trifle
with them after this fashion. He will seek from them actual guidance
for his own life, not an excuse for suppressing evidence or condemning
the conclusions of other men. And if this is his object, he will not
be disappointed. In a single case He gives us the hint of a law which
is applicable to all cases. That law remains true, whatever may be the
truth respecting our own sins or the sins of our parents. That law is
one which reveals the mind of God, and removes all dark surmises
respecting His government of the world. That law is one which we may
use for the regulation of our own conduct.
The disciples were speculating about final causes. They would not have
understood what any one meant who had told them they were doing so;
they were doing it nevertheless. Jesus met them with the _most_ final
cause. 'I can give you a better reason for this man's blindness than
those you have imagined. His blindness will be a means of showing
forth the power and purpose of God. He will learn himself, he will be
a teacher to the world through this blindness, whence light comes, who
is the Father of light.'
It was not the mere announcement of a principle. Every principle He
delivered embodied itself in an act. He added immediately: '_I must
work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh,
when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of
the world_.' He declares that what He was going to do He must do. He
did not choose His own way. When He was most exercising power, He was
obeying a power,--'_He was working the works of Him that sent Him._'
And every such work was a revelation. It showed forth the Will and the
Mind that had been creating and ruling all things. That Will was
proving itself to be a Will of absolute goodness,--that Mind, a light
in which is no darkness. But there is a sorrow for Him who is about to
impart joy. His countrymen had taken up stones to cast at Him. He has
a vision of a time when they would have their way. The light for a
while would be quenched. But as long as He was in the world, He must
illuminate it. Here, again, we have the feelings of the Man, the
presentiments of the Sufferer--not drawn out, but just indicated--that
we may have a glimpse into the heart from which they came. They cannot
be divided from the divine truth He is enunciating; they are the media
through which that truth is exhibited to us. The Word is indeed made
flesh; it is in the Son of Man that we know the Son of God.
'_When He 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, and
said unto him, Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam (which is by
interpretation, Sent). He went therefore, and washed, and came
seeing._'
Every one has remarked that this cure is distinguished from most
others that are recorded in the Gospels, by the careful use in it of
intermediate agencies. He does not merely speak the word, and the man
is healed. There is a process of healing. And I think you must confess
that the use of these agencies is a part of the sign to which St. John
wishes to draw our attention. If Christ's other signs testified that
there is an invisible power at work in all the springs of our
life,--that there is a Fountain of life from which those springs are
continually refreshed and renewed,--did not this sign testify that
there is a potency and virtue in the very commonest things; that God
has stored all nature with instruments for the blessing and healing of
His creatures? The mere miracle-worker who draws glory to himself
wishes to dispense with these things, lest he should be confounded
with the ordinary physician. The great Physician, who works because
His Father works, who comes to show what He is doing in His world,
puts an honour upon earth and water as well as upon all art which has
true observation and knowledge for its basis. He only distinguishes
Himself from other healers by showing that the source of their wisdom
and renovating power is in Him. We have put our faith and our science
at an immeasurable distance from each other. May not the separation
lead to the ruin of both?
But we are not allowed to lose ourselves amidst these general
characteristics of this cure. The words, '_He came seeing_,' remind us
that one special malady is brought before us; that we have to do, not
with a sick man, but with a blind man; and that it is as the Restorer
of sight that the Lord of man is declaring Himself to us. That object
is kept before us as we proceed in the story. '_The neighbours
therefore, and they that before had seen him that he was blind, said,
Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, This is he: others
said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. Therefore said they unto
him, How were thine eyes opened? He answered and said, A man that is
called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said to me, Go to
the Pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received
sight. Then said they unto him, Where is He? He answered, I know
not._' I do not introduce this passage for the sake of commenting upon
it (a commentary would be very superfluous and out of place), but that
we may be reminded continually how this theologian--he who has been
supposed to be writing a learned, dogmatical treatise, he who has been
supposed to live in an age in which plain facts had been forgotten in
profound speculations--tells a story. We feel at once that to talk
about its dramatical character is to spoil its effect. It is
dramatical, as every childlike narrative is dramatical. The people who
were alive at the time speak to us because they actually presented
themselves to the writer as living beings, and because he did not want
to thrust himself into their places. I do not say that these qualities
belong only to a divine teacher. They belong, in their measure, to
every simple narrator and poet. But they certainly do not belong to
the builder up of a system; and they are precisely the gifts which we
should expect would be imparted to one who had seen and handled the
Word of life, and was bearing a message concerning Him to his
brethren.
'_They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. And it
was the sabbath-day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes.
Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight.
He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do
see. Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God,
because he keepeth not the sabbath-day. Others said, How can a man
that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among
them._'
I observed before, that the only two acts of healing which are
recorded in this Gospel, as done by our Lord in Jerusalem, were done
on the Sabbath-day. In the story of the man at the Pool of Bethesda,
this was the most prominent circumstance; the subsequent discourse
bore upon it; the strongest, and to the Jews the most offensive,
proclamation by Jesus of God as His Father, arose out of it; the
purpose to kill Him was first suggested by it. Apparently what He said
then, and had said since at the feast of Tabernacles, was not quite
lost even upon the Pharisees. There were some in this particular
synagogue, if not in the Sanhedrim, who thought that to do a good act
on a Saturday might not be a sin against God. The next verses show
that they were a strong enough minority to force their fellows into a
further inquiry respecting the fact of the cure. '_They say unto the
blind man again, What sayest thou of Him, that He hath opened thine
eyes? He said, He is a prophet. But the Jews did not believe
concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until
they called the parents of him that had received his sight. And they
asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? How
then doth he now see? His parents answered them and said, We know that
this is our son, and that he was born blind: but by what means he now
seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of
age; ask him; he shall speak for himself. These words spake his
parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed
already, that if any man did confess that He was Christ, he should be
put out of the synagogue. Therefore said his parents, He is of age;
ask him._'
The answer of the man, that He who healed him was a prophet, was the
simplest of all forms of expressing his belief that he had been
brought into contact with a Person who was higher than himself, who
was sent from God. This passage would show, if it stood alone, how
little even the commonest Israelite identified the prophet with the
mere predicter of events. Foretelling had surely no direct connexion
with opening the eyes; but one who could do that was naturally felt to
be the bringer of a message and a blessing from another and a better
region. These words, as we have seen before, lay very near to the
others, '_He is the Christ_;' only in the last the king was blended
with the prophet, the Son of David with the successor of Elijah. It is
probable that the rulers of the synagogue would draw a much sharper
distinction between the names than the people did. The belief in Him
as a Prophet might be tolerated; those who owned Him as Christ were
interfering with the authority of the priests or of Rome. Positive
exclusion from worship and fellowship, therefore, might be restricted
to that. The parents of the blind man feared, that he had approached
the borders of offence. If they made a false step, it might be passed;
therefore it was prudent to keep as nearly as possible to the mere
fact of his blindness. Perhaps they had no opinion about the Person
who had healed their son. If they had, is it worth while to run risks
for an _opinion_? A _belief_ is another thing altogether. If a man has
_that_, he must run risks for it. His belief makes this demand upon
him, and perishes if the demand is not complied with.
'_Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him,
Give God the praise: we know that this Man is a sinner._' The two
parties had probably come to a compromise. The cure was to be admitted
as good; it was to be ascribed respectfully and devoutly to God; only
the instrument of it must be declared to be evil. It was, of course,
assumed that such an adjustment would be satisfactory to the beggar;
he would not rebel against the authority of his betters. Nor did he.
'_He answered and said, Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not: one
thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see._' Was not his as
fair an adjustment as theirs? He left them all their probable
conclusions, all their traditional wisdom. He vindicated to himself
only his pin-point of personal experience. No! it was not fair; the
doctors demurred to it, as they had a right to do. Theirs was a
fantastical airy possession, which every hour might diminish; he was
standing on solid ground; every day he might add something to that
ground. Nothing frets men like a discovery of this kind. The rulers of
the synagogue showed their irritation by repeating their question.
'_Then said they to him again, What did He to thee? how opened He
thine eyes?_' The beggar became bolder as the doctors became feebler.
'_He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear:
wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples? Then
they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses'
disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we
know not from whence he is._' Their self-complacency has returned. Of
such people as this blind beggar did the disciples of Jesus consist!
_They_ had a law and a history. Moses had been sent to them from God
fourteen hundred years before. About his mission there could be no
doubt; they had it in the book. What help had they to determine the
pretensions of the new Teacher, but His own words? The beggar thought
they must have some means of finding out what He was, if they were
learned men and guides of the people. '_The man answered and said unto
them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence
he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God
heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth
His will, him He heareth. Since the world began was it not heard that
any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this Man were
not of God, he could do nothing._' It was very simple, childish
logic,--the logic of a man who had convinced himself that God was
living then, and was ruling the world then as in the days of old. He
had done what the synagogue bade him. He had given God the glory. He
had confessed a good God, who cared for him an outcast. Jesus had
brought him to that confession, and therefore he could not, at the
bidding of any synagogue, call Him a sinner. There was only one safe
and conclusive reply to a man who spoke as he did. '_They answered and
said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach
us? And they cast him out._'
A strange process had been going on in this man, one worthy of all
study. The world of flowers and trees, of earth and sky, and of human
faces, had burst upon him; a vision too wonderful to take in, which
might have crushed him with its strangeness and its excess of beauty.
But with that had come another vision, for which his hours of darkness
had not been unfitting but perhaps preparing him,--the sense of a
loving Power near him, sympathising with him, caring to restore him;
the assurance that this Power must be His who made the trees and
flowers, the sky and earth, and had stamped on the human face an
expression that was not of the earth. This sense, this confidence,
came to him not suddenly, but gradually, by a discipline scarcely less
hard than that to which he had been subjected hitherto. It came to
him, in part, through that strange conflict with creatures of his own
flesh and blood,--with men of whom he had asked alms and whom he
reverenced as his masters,--into which he was brought almost as soon
as he could look into their countenances. It came through their denial
of facts, of which he felt as sure as he was of the existence of those
things which he had begun to see. It came to him with a feeling of his
own duty, of his own power, to declare that God did not forget
beggars, and that the man who had raised him out of misery must be
from God. But this inner revelation was not overwhelming like the
outward,--it was sustaining. The man who could look upon sun and stars
found that he was more than they. God was nearer to the beggar than to
them. A light was shining into him which did not come from them. Was
it not a light which would go with him and cheer him, whatever
synagogue cast him out; yes, if sun and stars were to disappear for
ever?
He had been under a marvellous education. It was not completed.
'_Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when He had found him,
He said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? And he said,
Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him? And Jesus said unto him,
Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee. And he
said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped Him._'
An incomprehensible, incredible record, if all that we have been
hearing of a Life-giver and a Light of the world is untrue; if all
communications come to human beings from without; if the Son of God is
only revealed to us in letters; if there is not a conscience in man to
which He manifests Himself. But how consistent and harmonious and
consolatory a story is it, if this Gospel is indeed what it professes
to be, if it does not mock us with idle sounds when it tells us of One
who was with the Father before all worlds, whose light always shined
in the darkness, which did not comprehend it, who came into the world
to show men of this Father, and to restore them to fellowship with
Him! How the narrative concerning this beggar, and the way in which
the Son of God led him to the knowledge of Himself, becomes then a
narrative for each of us! We need not trace any outward sorrow that
has been ordained for us to the sin of our parents or to sins of our
own done in some former state. Accepting in either case the
punishment, we may refer it to the will of a Father, that through it
we may perceive how the blank in our sensible perceptions and in our
hearts may be filled,--that through it we may be led to the Son, the
Life-giver and Light of the world. The like calamities in our brethren
are to be the instruments through which we convey to them a message
concerning the same Son. If we claim them as opportunities for showing
forth God's healing power; if we own the science and the art which are
needful for the exercise of that power as His gifts; if we thus work
His works,--others will find, we shall find more and more, that the
riddle of the world has a solution,--that Christ has solved it.
And what is true of outward sorrows--of the want of sight, the
greatest of all--is true also of moral evils, of the moral blindness
from which they spring and in which they terminate. Our Lord's words,
those I took for my text, lead us into the heart of this mystery also;
they explain some of the greatest contradictions in our own lives, and
in the world's life. '_And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into
this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see
might be made blind._'
How is He come into the world for judgment when He came not to judge
the world, but to save it? He has answered the question before. He
answers it more fully here. What we want to be saved from is our
darkness. We can only be saved from it by His light. That light brings
us into judgment. It distinguishes--it condemns! It distinguishes
between that in us which seeks light, and that in us which flies from
light. It does not condemn us for being dark; it condemns us for not
owning our darkness. It does not condemn us for not having a power and
virtue in us to escape from the darkness; but for refusing to
entertain the light which would raise us out of it. Our eyes are not
formed to create light, but to receive it; if they will close
themselves to that which is always seeking to open them and illuminate
them, _that_ is the sentence--that is the condemnation. The blind
beggar washes in the Pool of Siloam, and comes seeing. He hears of the
Son of God, and says, '_Lord, who is He that I might believe on Him_?'
The Pharisee grudges eyesight to the beggar,--denies that God may work
good on His own Sabbath-day. He is satisfied with his power of seeing;
and the light that would open God's glorious kingdom to him puts out
the eyes that he had.
Dear brethren, may Christ give us honesty and courage to confess our
blindness, that we may turn to Him who can make us see! May He deliver
us from all conceit of our own illumination, lest we should become
hopelessly dark!
DISCOURSE XIX.
THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP.
[Lincoln's Inn, 3d Sunday after Trinity, June 8, 1856.]
ST. JOHN X. 27-29.
_My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow
me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never
perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My
Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man
is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand._
A recent traveller in the Holy Land, who has looked on all its
localities with honest and reverent eyes, and has enabled his readers
to see them almost as clearly as himself, has suggested that the Mount
of Olivet was the scene of the conversation, in which Jesus declared
Himself as the Son of God to the man whose eyes He had opened. The man
whom He had healed at the Pool of Bethesda He found in the Temple; but
an excommunicated Israelite would not have been allowed to enter those
precincts. If we suppose our Lord to have met him on that other ground
which He visited so often, the interview may have been secret. And the
words, '_For judgment am I come into the world_,' which are so evident
a commentary upon it, may have been addressed to persons, His
disciples and others, whom He joined afterwards. Then it will appear
how the concluding verses of the 9th chapter may have formed part of
the same dialogue with the opening verses of the 10th,--how much
closer a relation there is between them outwardly and inwardly than we
at first perceive.
'_And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they
which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.
And some of the Pharisees which were with Him heard these words, and
said unto Him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were
blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your
sin remaineth._'
These Pharisees may have fallen in by chance with Jesus and His
disciples as they walked down the mount, or may have come expressly to
catch Him in His words. They must have heard that He had spoken of
blind leaders of the blind. They knew, at all events, that His
strongest language had been directed against them,--the guides of the
people,--those to whom the humble Israelites turned for light and
teaching. The question, '_Are we blind also_?' may have been asked in
recollection of these former passages between them, or in mere scorn
that a Galilæan who had learnt no letters should presume to judge
them. The answer struck at the principle of the Pharisaic character.
'Alas! if you only felt that you were as blind as any of those whom
you are professing to teach and show the right way, there would be no
complaint to make of you. You would turn to the Source of light; you
would allow the light that lighteth every man to illuminate you. "_But
now ye say, We see._" You are satisfied with the light that is in
yourselves. You think that you have a light that does not belong to
these poor wretches who know not the law. "_Therefore your sin
remaineth._" You stumble, and you cause those whom you guide to
stumble.'