The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses. / New Edition

by Frederick Denison Maurice

'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.