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 unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash and I went and washed, and I received sight.-John ix. 1-11.

And the disciples of John showed him of all these things. And John calling unto him two of his disciples, sent them to Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another? When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another? And in the same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus, answering, said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.-Luke vii. 18, 22.

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the whole world itself could not contain the books that should be written.-John xxi. 25.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SACRED NARRATIVE.

Christ having wrought miracles in his own name, proved that he possessed this power in himself as an inherent energy. But how superior is this power to all that can be boasted by the greatest men who have ever lived! What conqueror would not cheerfully barter all the power in which he glories, for the control of wounds and diseases, of winds and waves, of life and death? This power exhibited Christ in the midst of all his humiliation, as greater than any, and than all the children of Adam: and surrounded his character with a splendour becoming his mission. I need not illustrate how important, how necessary, this greatness was to Christ, as the "Mediator between God and man!" DR. DWIGHt.

Our Lord gave sight to the blind. He poured day upon those hopeless and benighted eyes, which had never been visited with the least dawning ray. The dumb, at his command, found a ready tongue, and burst into songs of praise. The deaf were all ear, and listened to the joyful sound of salvation. The lame, lame from their very birth, threw aside their

crutches, and, full of transport and exultation, leaped like the bounding roe. He restored floridity and beauty to the flesh, emaciated by consuming sickness, or encrusted with a loathsome leprosy. All manner of diseases, though blended with the earliest seeds of life, and riveted in the constitution by a long inveterate predominancy;-diseases that baffled the skill of the physician, and mocked the force of medicine these he cured, not by tedious applications, but in the twinkling of an eye; not by costly prescriptions, or painful operations, but by a word from his mouth, or a touch from his hand, nay, by the fringe of his garment, or the bare act of his will. Any one of these miracles had been enough to endear the character, and eternize the memory of another person. But they were common things, matters of daily occurrence with our Divine Master.

REV. J. HERVEY.

The man was born blind: the blind man sat begging.-The way is made; our Saviour addresses himself to the miracle; a miracle, not more in the thing done, than in the form of doing it. What must the beholders needs think, when they saw the clay upon the holes of his eyes? Is this the way to give either eyes or sight?

Purposely, did our Saviour make choice of such a subject for his miracle: a man so poor, so public. The glory of the work could not have reached so far, if it had been done to the wealthiest citizen of Jerusalem. It could not be, but that many eyes had been witnesses of this man's want of eyes. He sat begging at one of the temple gates. Not only all the city, but all the country must needs know him; as thrice a year they all came up to worship at Jerusalem. Besides his blindness, his trade made him remarkable; his importunity drawing the eyes of all passengers; not in an obscure village of Judea, but at the gate of the temple of Jerusalem !

How could the neighbours do less than ask where he was that had done so strange a cure? Now, as prejudiced against Christ, and partial to the Pharisees, they bring the late-blind man before those professed enemies unto Christ. Hear him stoutly defending that gracious Author of his cure, against the cavils of the malicious Pharisees: I see him, as a resolute confessor, suffering excommunication for the name of Christ, and maintaining the innocence and honour of so blessed a benefactor. I hear him read a Divinity lecture to them that sat in Moses' chair; and convincing them of blindness, who punished him for seeing! How can I but envy thee, O happy man, who, of a patient, provest an advocate for thy Saviour; whose gain of bodily sight made way for thy spiritual eyes; who hast lost a synagogue, and hast found heaven; who, being abandoned of sinners, art received of the Lord of Glory? BISHOP HALL.

"He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay." This might almost have blinded a man that had sight. But what could it do towards curing the blind? God works either with or without means, and all the creatures are only that, which his almighty operation makes them.

“And said to him, Go wash at the pool of Siloam." Perhaps our Lord

intended to make the miracle more taken notice of: for a crowd of people would naturally gather round him, to observe the event of so strange a prescription. And it is exceeding probable, the guide who must have led him, in traversing a great part of the city, would mention the errand he was going upon, and so call those who saw him to a greater attention. From the fountain of Siloam, which was without the walls of Jerusalem, a little stream flowed into the city, and was received in a kind of basin, near the temple, and called, the Pool of Siloam, "Which is by interpretation, Sent." And so was a type of the Messiah, who was sent of God. "He went and washed, and came seeing." He believed, and obeyed, and found a blessing. Had he reasoned like Naaman, on the impropriety of the means, he had justly been left in darkness. Lord, may our proud hearts be subdued to the method of thy recovering grace! REV. J. WEsley.

"The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down.”—Psal. cxlvi. 8. That the Lord, of whom all these things are spoken, is the Messiah, or Jehovah incarnate, appears, as Dr. Hammond hath justly observed, from what is said of him in verse 8, “The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind;" the miracle of restoring sight to men born blind being one reserved for the Son of God to work, at his coming in the flesh. "Since the world began," saith the man to whom sight had been thus restored," was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind."-John ix. 32. This, therefore, was the first of those tokens given by Jesus to the disciples of John, whereby it might be known that he was the expected Christ; " Go and tell John the things which ye have heard and seen; the blind receive their sight," &c. But how did this evince him to be the Messiah? Plainly, because it had been foretold by the prophets, as in Isai. xxix. 18, xxxv. 5, xlii. 18, that Messiah, when he came, should give sight to the blind. Now, if one part of the Psalmist's description belongs to Christ, the other members of it must do so likewise, it being evident that the whole is spoken of the same person. He, therefore, is "the God of Jacob, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that therein is:" and, upon his appearing among men in the body of our flesh, he showed himself possessed of power to relieve all the wants, corporal and spiritual, of poor lost mankind. When he rescued men from the bondage of Satan, he "executed judgment for the oppressed:" when he fed thousands by a miracle, or when he preached the word to such as desired to hear and receive it, he “ gave food to the hungry:" when, by pardon and grace, he released those who were bound with the chains of their sins, he "loosed the prisoners:" when he poured light into the sightless eye-ball, or illuminated with saving knowledge the understanding of the ignorant, he "opened the eyes of the blind:" when he made the crooked woman straight, or rectified the obliquity of a depraved will, he "raised those that were bowed down." Happy the people of such a God! happy the subjects of such a King! Rejoice, and sing, and shout aloud: for lo, "The LORD shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the LORD!" BISHOP HOrne.

"Why herein is a marvellous thing." As if he had said, This is wonderful indeed! Is it possible that such persons as you are, who pretend to know a true from a false prophet, cannot decide in a case so plain? Has not the man opened my eyes? Is not the miracle known to all the town, and could any one do it who was not endued with the power of God? "Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. Our Lord performed no surgical operation in this cure: the man was born blind, and he was restored to sight by the power of God. That there are cases, in which a person who was born blind may be restored to sight by surgical means, we know; but no such means were used by Christ: and it is worthy of remark, that from the foundation of the world, no person born blind had been restored to sight, even by surgical operation, till about the year of our Lord, 1728; when the celebrated Dr. Cheselden, by couching the eyes of a young man, fourteen years of age, who had been born blind, restored him to perfect soundThis was the effect of well-directed surgery: that performed by Christ was by miracle. DR. ADAM CLARKE.

ness.

These three, the case of the man born blind, John ix. 1-7; the blind man of Bethsaida, Mark viii. 22-26; and the deaf man near the sea of Galilee, viii. 32-37; are the only instances where a deliberate external application is related to have been used, and in all these cases the reason for using it seems to have been one and the same, namely, to convey to the individuals, on whom the miracles were performed, a clear assurance that Jesus was the person at whose command, and by whose agency the cure was wrought, and to enable them to state to others the grounds of this assurance fully and circumstantially.

A blind man can know another only by the voice or the touch. The blind man near Bethsaida, our Lord led out of the town, remote from the crowd, that he might be sure of the person who spoke to or touched him ; he then spat on his eyes, and laid his hands on him, and restored him to sight, though imperfectly; after that, he put his hand again upon his eyes, and he saw clearly. What mode could give him more assurance that the cure was wrought by the interposition of Jesus? The deaf man could judge of the intentions of another only by seeing what he does; him therefore our Lord took aside, that he might fix his attention to himself, and then he put his fingers into his ears, and touched his tongue, thus signifying to him that he intended to produce some change in those organs; he then looked up to heaven, at the same time speaking, to signify that the change would proceed from a Divine power, exercised at his interposition. The very same purpose was equally answered by our Lord's application to the eyes of the man born blind. Immediately, on approaching our Saviour, after receiving his sight, he must have recognized him by his voice. Had the grounds of his assurance been less full and circumstantial, he never could have so unanswerably replied to the captious queries of the Pharisees.

These three men do not appear to have had any previous knowledge of

our Saviour's character. The man born blind, he healed without any solicitation. The blind man at Bethsaida, and the deaf man, were brought by their friends. When the two blind men at Capernaum, Matt. ix. 27-31, and the two others near Jericho, xx. 30, 34, applied to our Saviour, crying, "Son of David, have mercy upon us!" a less external application was sufficient; as they professed their belief, Jesus only required that their profession should be sincere, "Believe ye," said he, "that I have power to do this? they said, Yea, Lord: then he touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you; and their eyes were opened."

These incidents display the miraculous nature of the facts, and the admirable propriety of our Lord's conduct in every circumstance, displaying the sobriety and dignity becoming his Divine character. DR. GRAVES.

"Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.-John iv. 48. Dumb the father stood in apprehension; but nature triumphed over his fears; and again he urges his suit: " The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down, ere my child die!" Here is importunity! He would not leave the Saviour till he had obtained his request. He could not take a denial. It was his last resource. For a moment, the answer of Jesus staggers him. For a moment, and only for a moment, he doubts whether he must return home. Home! His dying child rises before his eyes; he hears again all his groans; he sees life quivering upon his lips; and he reiterates his plea, with renewed earnestness. Here is perseverance! The good Physician saw and pitied the agony of his soul. "Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him; and he went his way."

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Thy son liveth!" What notes ever sounded half so sweet in a mortal ear! Not the cry of the infant Isaac in the ears of Sarah; nor the lisping of Samuel in the ears of Hannah. Not more sweet did the voice of Joseph sound in the ears of Israel, after an absence of twenty years, and when he received him again, as it were from the dead. "Thy son liveth!" In a moment, a mountain of anguish removes from his heart. "And as he was going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth! Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend: and they said unto him, Yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed and his whole house." "The fever left him!" it was no regular abatement of the disorder: it was a sudden transition from the borders of the grave to perfect soundness. The faith of the father, built upon evidence so incontrovertible, respected not merely the miracle which he had witnessed, but the person, character, and glory of the Saviour; and his family participated his joy. Apply this affecting and encouraging subject, ye parents, who are weeping over your children. Do not despair. While you see traces of disease on their countenances, spread their case before this great Physician! DR. COLLYER.

"Great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were