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.