the counsels of his wisdom and righteousness and grace, had willed that on this man should be concentrated more than the ordinary penalties of the world's universal sin, that a more than ordinary grace and glory might be revealed in their removing.

The Lord's words that follow, "I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work: As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world," are, as it were, a girding of himself up to, and a justifying of, his coming work. Whatever perils beset that work, yet it must be accomplished; for his time, "the day" of his open activity, of his walking up and down among the people, and doing them good, was drawing to an end. “The night," when he should no longer lighten the world with his presence, or have the opportunity of doing, with his own hands at least, works like these, was approaching. He worked in the day, and was himself the light of the day. The image is borrowed from our common day and our common night, of which the first is the time appointed for labour; the latter, by its darkness, opposes to many kinds of labour, obstacles insurmountable. The difficulty which Olshausen finds in the words, "when no man can work," inasmuch as however Christ was himself withdrawn from the earth, yet his disciples did effectually work†, rises solely from his missing the point of the proverbial phrase. Our Lord means not to say "The night cometh in which no other man can work, in which no work can be done;" but what he would affirm, in the language of a familiar proverb which has its truth when applied to the heavenly kingdom, is this, No man who has not done his work in the day, can do it in the night; for him the time

This was a favourite Arian passage; see AUGUSTINE, Serm. 135,

c. 1--4, and his answer there to their abuse of these words.

+ The same difficulty strikes Augustine: Numquid nox erat, quando claudus ille ad verbum Petri salvus effectus est, immo ad verbum Domini habitantis in Petro? Numquid nox erat, quando transeuntibus discipulis ægri cum lectulis ponebantur, ut vel umbrâ transeuntium tangerentur ?

cometh in which he cannot work,-and he applies this even to himself*. And then, with a prophetic allusion to the miracle which he was going to perform, he would say, "What fitter task for me than this of opening the eyes of the blind? for as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world: what work could become me better than this, which is so apt a symbol of my greater spiritual work, the restoring of the darkened spiritual vision of the race of men†?"

Having thus justified and explained his coming work, our Lord proceeds to the cure. "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." A medicinal value was attributed in old time to saliva‡, and we have a similar instance of its use in the case of another blind man, (Mark viii. 23,) and also in the case of one who was suffering not from the same defect, but from a defect in the organs of speech and hearing; (Mark vii. 33 ;) neither are we altogether without examples of the medicinal use of clay §. Yet it

* The power of triviality can reach no further than it has reached in the exposition of Paulus: I must heal this man's eyes, while there is yet daylight to see, for when it is dark I could not attempt so fine and delicate an operation." See back, pp. 73-76.

† So Cyril: Επείπερ ἀφῖγμαι φωτίσων τὰ ἐν ἐνδείᾳ φωτὸς, δεῖ με καὶ τοῖς τοῦ σώματος τὸ φῶς μεταδοῦναι.

The virtue especially of the saliva jejuna, in cases of disorders of the eyes, was well known to antiquity. (Pliny (H. N., 1. 28, c. 7,) says, Lippitudines matutinâ quotidie velut inunctione arceri. In both accounts (SUETONIUS, Vespas., c. 7; TACITUS, Hist., 1. 4, c. 8,) of that restoring of a blind man to sight, attributed to Vespasian, the use of this remedy occurs. In the latter the man appears begging of the emperor, ut genas et oculorum orbes dignaretur respergere oris excremento; and abundant quotations to the same effect are to be found in Wetstein (in loc.)

§ Thus Serenus Samonicus, a physician in the time of Caracalla, who wrote a poem upon medicine:

Si tumor insolitus typho se tollat inani,

Turgentes oculos vili circumline cœno.

In this healing by clay, while yet the dust, or that out of which the clay is moulded, is that which most often afflicts and wounds the eyes, Augustine (In Ev. Joh., Tract. 2,) finds a striking analogy with the healing of flesh through flesh, our flesh through Christ's flesh: Gloriam ejus nemo posset

would plainly be an entirely erroneous view of the matter, to suppose that besides his divine power, the Lord also used natural remedies, or that these were more than conductors, not in themselves needful, but which he willingly assumed to be the channels for the conveying of his power; for we observe at other healings of the blind no intervention of such means finding place. (Matt. xx. 30-34.) Probably the reasons which induced the use of these means were ethical; it was perhaps an help for the weak faith of the man to find that something external was done.

There may be again a question what was the exact purport of the command, "Go wash in the pool of Siloam." Was the healing itself connected with that washing? or was the moistened clay the one conductor of the healing power, and the washing merely designed to remove the hindrances which the medium of cure would itself, if suffered to remain, have opposed even to the restored organs of vision? Thus I should understand it. Whatever other motive the command may have had, it at any rate served as a proof, however slight a one, of the man's faith, that he willingly went as he was bidden.

It must further be asked, Did St. John trace something significant and mystical in the etymology of Siloam that he should introduce it here," which is by interpretation Sent" It is scarcely probable that he did not acknowledge some allusion in the name to the present fact, or some prophecy of Christ's great work of healing and washing; for had he not done so, it is little likely that he would have brought in the derivation, which, if it had possessed no religious significance, might have been appropriate enough in a lexicon, but one would scarcely expect to meet in a gospel.

posset videre, nisi carnis humilitate sanaretur. Unde non poteramus videre? Irruerat homini quasi pulvis in oculum, irruerat terra, sauciaverat oculum, videre non poterat lucem: oculus ille sauciatus inunguitur; terrâ sauciatus erat, et terra illuc mittitur, ut sanetur . . . De pulvere cœcatus es, de pulvere sanaris: ergo caro te cœcaverat, caro te sanat. See the meaning of the use of this means for restoration, which Irenæus, l. 5, c. 15, finds.

Olshausen dissents from Tholuck, who finds in this "sent" a reference to Christ himself, on the ground that upon the present occasion the Lord was not the "Sent," but the sender. Yet might there well be allusion here in the mind of the Evangelist, not to this particular healing, in which it is true he is rather sender than sent, but to the whole work of his ministry, which was a mission*, which he ever characterizes as a work whereto he was the sent of God, (John vii. 29; viii. 42;) so that he bears this very title," the Apostle of our profession." (Heb. iii. 1.) These waters of Siloam, in which the blind man washed and was illuminated, may well have been to the Evangelist the image of the waters of baptism, or indeed of the whole cleansing work of a commissioned Saviour for the opening the eyes of the spiritually blind; and the very name which the pool bore may have had in his eyes a fitness, which by this notice he would indicate as more than accidental.

The man was obedient to the word of the Lord; "He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing;" returned, that is, according to all appearance, to his own house; it does not seem that he came back to the Lord. His friends and neighbours are the first who take note of the thing which has been done; well-disposed persons, as would appear, but altogether under the influence of the Pharisees. They wonder, debate whether it is indeed he whom they had known so long; for the opening of the eyes would have altered the whole countenance; being convinced that it is, they would

崇

Augustine (Serm. 135, c. 1): Quis est ipse Missus, nisi qui dixit in ipsâ lectione, Ego, inquit, veni ut faciam opera ejus qui misit me; and in Ev. Joh., Tract. 44. Misit illum ad piscinam quæ vocatur Siloe. Pertinuit autem ad Evangelistam commendare nobis nomen hujus piscinæ, et ait, Quod interpretatur Missus. Jam quis sit Missus agnoscitis: nisi enim ille fuisset missus, nemo nostrùm esset ab iniquitate dimissus. So Chrysostom, Hom. 57 in Joh. On St. John's derivation of Siloam, see THOLUCK's Beiträge zur Spracherklärung des N. T., p. 123, sq., where he also enters into the hard question of its position, whether at the east or west side of the city.

fain learn how the cure was effected, and see him who had wrought it; and at length, as the safest course, they bring the man, with no evil dispositions either towards him or towards Christ, to their spiritual rulers,-not, that is, before the great Sanhedrim, for that was not always sitting, but the lesser. The work may have seemed questionable to them, especially as having been wrought on the Sabbath; the mention just at this place of the day on which the healing was accomplished seems inserted as the explanation of their having found it necessary to bring the case before their ecclesiastical rulers, "the Pharisees," as St. John calls them; not that the Sanhedrim exclusively consisted of these, (for Caiaphas was a Sadducee, and see also Acts xxiii. 6;) but these being the most numerous and influential party there, and the bitterest enemies of the Lord.

Here there was a more formal examination into the circumstances under which the healing had taken place, and the man again told his simple tale: "He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and do see." Some of the Pharisees present seek to rob the miracle of its significance, by bringing out that it was accomplished on the Sabbath*,-so that, granting its reality, it did not prove anything in favour of him that wrought it; rather was it to be inferred, since he was thus an evident transgressor of God's commandment, that he was in connexion with the powers of evil. No lighter charge than that which they made at another time, when they said, "He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils," (Matt. ix. 34,) was involved in this word of theirs. But there was throughout all these events, which were so fatally fixing the fortunes of the Jewish people, an honester and a better party in the Sanhedrim, of which Nicodemus and

* The littleness of the Rabbinical casuistry with regard to the Sabbath, and the works permitted and forbidden on that day, are almost inconceivable. Thus Lightfoot quotes from a treatise on this subject: Vinum in medium oculi injici [sabbato] prohibitum, poni super palpebras licitum. Alter dicit, sputum etiam super palpebras poni prohibitum.