The miracles of Jesus - Classical Christian Literature by Athleo.net

178 REPEATED SIN AND
that in the case of the man born blind, they
were to apply no such cut - and - dried rule. This
man's chronic helplessness, however, was a retributory
sequence to one of the transgressions of his former
life.
The moral weakness which had early
borne such
acrid, poisoned fruit, after persisting through a life
of physical emaciation, reappears in the crisis of his
healing. Never, perhaps, in the whole course of His
ministry did the Divine Physician restore a man
whose faith was at so low an ebb, and in whom
will-power was so nearly quenched. Some one has
well observed that in the cases of the Centurion
and of the woman who touched Christ's garment,
faith had been developed to the highest possible
point. But here the pulse has almost stopped, and
it seems scarcely possible to stimulate faith. The
man by the pool is a heap of half-defunct faculties
from , which there arises nothing but a languid,
desponding whine. When Jesus asks if he wills
to be made whole, a querulous plaint is the only
answer :
" I have no man to put me into the pool."
He is a man in a groove from which there is no
exit, and he cannot conceive of healing through
any other virtue than that of the upsurging waters
by which he waits. A creature of tradition that he
is, will-power, the gift of turning round the eyes of
the mind, responsiveness to new methods, are gone.
And yet, after his own narrow and ignoble fashion,
he means well—at least for himself. He is not quite
dead to religion, for when Jesus wants to speak the
word of warning, He finds him in the temple.
To be found in the temple in those days perhaps