Bodily diseases are taken to symbolise spiritual infirmities.
Mark the peculiarities of Scripture anthropology as brought out in this
view of humanity:---
Its gloomy views of man's actual condition.
Its emphatic declaration that that condition is abnormal.
Its confidence of effecting a cure.
Its transcendentally glorious conception of what man may become.
Men are blind and deaf; that is to say, their powers of perception are
destroyed by reason of disease. What a picture! The great spiritual
realities are all unseen, as Elisha's young servant was blind to the
fiery chariots that girdled the prophet. Men are blind to the starry
truths that shine as silver in the firmament. They are deaf to the
Voice which is gone out to the ends of the earth, and yet they have
eyes and ears, conscience, intuitions. They possess organs, but these
are powerless.
And while the blindness is primarily in regard to spiritual and
religious truths, it is not confined to these, but wherever spiritual
blindness has fallen, the whole of a man's knowledge will suffer. There
will be blindness to the highest philosophy, to the true basis and
motive of morals, to true psychology, to the noblest poetry. All will
be of the earth, earthy. You cannot strike religion out of men's
thoughts, as you might take a stone out of a wall and leave the wall
standing; you take out foundation and mortar, and make a ruinous heap.
I know, of course, that there may be much mental activity without any
perception of spiritual realities, but all knowledge which is not
purely mathematical or physical suffers by the absence of such
perception. All this blindness is caused by sin.
Christ is the giver of spiritual sight. He restores the faculty by
taking away the hindrance to its exercise. Further, He gives sight
because He gives light.
But turn to facts of experience, and consider the mental apathy of
heathenism as contrasted with the energy of mind within the limits of
Christendom. Greece, of course, is a brilliant exception, but even
there (1) what of the conceptions of God? (2) what of the effect of the
wise on the mass of the nation? Think of the languid intellectual life
of the East. Think of the energy of thought which has been working
within the limits of Christianity. Think of Christian theology compared
with the mythologies of idolatry. And the contrast holds not only in
the religious field but all over the field of thought.
There is no such sure way of diffusing a culture which will refine and
strengthen all the powers of mind as to diffuse the knowledge of Jesus,
and to make men love Him. In His light they will see light.
To know Him and to keep company with Him is 'a liberal education,' as
is seen in many a lowly life, all uninfluenced by what is called
learning, but enriched with the finest flowers of 'culture,' and having
gathered them all in Christ's garden.
Christ is the true light; in Him do we see. Without Him, what is all
other knowledge? He is central to all, like genial heat about the roots
of a plant. There is other knowledge than that of sense; and for the
highest of all our knowledge we depend on Him who is the Word. In that
region we can neither observe nor experiment. In that region facts must
be brought by some other means than we can command, and we can but draw
more or less accurate deductions from them. Logic without revelation is
like a spinning-machine without any cotton, busy drawing out nothing.
Here we have to listen. 'The entrance of Thy words giveth light.' Your
God shall come and save you; then, by that divine coming and saving,
'the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall
be unstopped.'