THE BLIND MAN EXAMINED.

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miracle, and to accept their dictum that Jesus was a sinner.

But the man was made of sturdier stuff than his parents. He was not to be overawed by their authority, or knocked down by their assertions. He breathed quite freely in the halo-atmosphere of their superior sanctity. "We know," the Pharisees had said, "that this man is a sinner." "Whether He is a sinner," the man replied, "I do not know; one thing I do know, that, being blind, now I see." Then they began again their weary and futile cross-examination. "What did He do to thee? how did He open thine eyes?" But the man had had enough of this. "I told you once, and ye did not attend. Why do ye wish to hear again? Is it possible that ye too wish to be His disciples ? Bold irony this to ask these stately, ruffled, scrupulous Sanhedrists, whether he was really to regard them as anxious and sincere inquirers about the claims of the Nazarene Prophet! Clearly here was a man whose presumptuous honesty would neither be bullied into suppression nor corrupted into a lie. He was quite impracticable. So, since authority, threats, blandishments had all failed, they broke into abuse. "Thou art His disciple we are the disciples of Moses; of this man we know nothing." "Strange," he replied, "that you should know nothing of a man who yet has wrought a miracle such as not even Moses ever wrought; and we know that neither He nor any one else could have done

335). "The words are an adjuration to tell the truth (comp. Josh. vii. 19),” says Dean Alford; but he seems to confuse it with a phrase like Al-hamdu lillâh, “to God be the praise" (of your care), which is a different thing, and would require τὴν δόξαν. A friend refers me to 2 Cor. xi. 31 for a similar adjuration; cf. Rom. ix. 1, 5.

it, unless He were from God." What! shades of Hillel and of Shammai! was a mere blind beggar, a natural ignorant heretic, altogether born in sins, to be teaching them! Unable to control any longer their transport of indignation, they flung him out of the hall, and out of the synagogue.

But Jesus did not neglect His first confessor. He, too, in all probability had, either at this or some previous time, been placed under the ban of lesser excommunication, or exclusion from the synagogue; for we scarcely ever again read of His re-entering any of those synagogues which, during the earlier years of His ministry, had been His favourite places of teaching and resort. He sought out and found the man, and asked him, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God ?" "Why, who is He, Lord," answered the man, "that I should believe on Him?"

"Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He who talketh with thee."4

1 There is no healing of the blind in the Old Testament, or in the Acts. 2 It is true that this mildest form of excommunication (neziphah) was only temporary, for thirty days; and that it applied to only one synagogue. But if it were once pronounced, the time could easily be extended, so as to make it a niddouî (?) for ninety days, and the decree be adopted by other synagogues (Gfrörer, Jahrh. d. Heils, i. 183). Exclusion from the synagogue did not, however, involve exclusion from the Temple, where a separate door was provided for the excommunicate. The last stage of excommunication was the cherem or shammatta, which was as bad as the Roman interdictio ignis et aquae. The Jews declare that Joshua Ben Perachiah had been the teacher of Jesus, and excommunicated Him to the blast of 400 rams'-horns. (Wagenseil, Sota, p. 1057.) But this Joshuah Ben Perachial lived in the reign of Alexander Jannæus, who died B.C. 79!

3 Kal Tís éσTI (John ix. 36). The xal as often indicates a question full of surprise and emotion. See Jelf's Greek Syntax, § 759. Cf. Mark x. 26 (kai Tis dúvatai σweñvai; “Who then can be saved?"); Luke x. 29; 2 Cor.

ii. 2.)

• Professor Westcott points out the striking fact that this spontaneous

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TRUE AND FALSE SHEPHERDS.

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Lord, I believe," he answered; and he did Him

reverence.

It must have been shortly after this time that our Lord pointed the contrast between the different effects of His teaching-they who saw not, made to see; and those who saw, made blind. The Pharisees, ever restlessly and discontentedly hovering about Him, and in their morbid egotism always on the look-out for some reflection on themselves, asked "if they too were blind." The answer of Jesus was, that in natural blindness there would have been no guilt, but to those who only stumbled in the blindness of wilful error a claim to the possession of sight was a self-condemnation.

And when the leaders, the teachers, the guides were blind, how could the people see?

The thought naturally led Him to the nature of true and false teachers, which He expanded and illustrated in the beautiful apologue-half parable, half allegory-of the True and the False Shepherds. He told them that He was the Good Shepherd,1 who laid down His life for the sheep; while the hireling shepherds, flying from danger, betrayed their flocks. He, too, was that door of the sheepfold, by which all His true predecessors alone had entered, while all the false-from the first thief who had climbed into God's fold-had broken in some other way. And then He told them that of His own

revelation to the outcast from the synagogue finds its only parallel in the similar revelation (John iv. 26) to the outcast from the nation" (Characteristics of the Gosp. Miracles, p. 61).

1 Speaking of this allegory, Mr. Sanday points out the circumstance that the only other allegory in the Gospels is in John xv. "The Synoptists have no allegories as distinct from parables. The fourth Evangelist no parables as a special form of allegory" (Fourth Gospel, p. 167). As the phrase is & mov d kaλds, not åyalds, perhaps it had better be rendered “true shepherd," rather than "good" But Kands is untranslateablo.

free will He would lay down His life for the sheep, both of this and of His other flocks, 1 and that of His own power He would take it again. But all these divine mysteries were more than they could understand; and while some declared that they were the nonsense of one who had a devil and was mad, others could only plead that they were not like the words of one who had a devil, and that a devil could not have opened the eyes of the blind.

Thus, with but little fruit for them, save the bitter fruit of anger and hatred, ended the visit of Jesus to the Feast of Tabernacles. And since His very life was now in danger, He withdrew once more from Jerusalem to Galilee, for one brief visit before He bade to His old home His last farewell.

1 In John x. 16, there is an unfortunate obliteration of the distinction between the avλn, "fold," and wolμrn, "flock," of the original.

CHAPTER XLII.

FAREWELL TO GALILEE.

"I see that all things come to an end: but thy commandment is excceding broad."-Ps. exix. 96.

IMMEDIATELY after the events just recorded, St. John narrates another incident which took place two months subsequently, at the winter Feast of Dedication.' In accordance with the main purpose of his Gospel, which was to narrate that work of the Christ in Judæa, and especially in Jerusalem, which the Synoptists had omitted, he says nothing of an intermediate and final visit to Galilee, or of those last journeys to Jerusalem respecting parts of which the other Evangelists supply us with so many details. And yet that Jesus must have returned to Galilee is clear, not only from the other Evangelists, but also from the nature of the case and from certain incidental facts in the narrative of St. John himself.2

1 John x. 22-42. The Feast of Tabernacles was at the end of September or early in October. The Dedication was on December 20.

* See John x. 25 (which evidently refers to His last discourse to them two months before) and 40 ("again"). Besides, the expression of John x. 22, "And it was the Dedication at Jerusalem," would have little meaning if a new visit were not implied; and those words are perhaps added for the very reason that the Dedication might be kept anywhere else.