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

318 THE OPENING OF THE EYES
than this unostentatious gradual manner of the
miracle
Let us imagine, as we may well do, that he
was hard to be convinced, while at the same time
easily imposed upon, requiring repeated efforts to be
made and a varied instrumentality to be employed,
ere he yielded to the power of the truth. How
appropriate to such a condition was the slowness and
apparent difficulty of the way in which he was healed.
Jesus took him aside from the crowd, to some lonely
spot in the neighbourhood of the town, away from
the hindering influences of his surroundings, that face
to face with I
all
[imself, with no other being intervening,
the very isolation might concentrate his thoughts
upon his cure and his Healer. Then Jesus applied
His own saliva to his eyes — gave a part of Himself in
the cure, for that is the meaning of this strange
action. 1 low unlike it was to the first creation c f the
eye out of the dust, by a word, costing nothing !
In
this new creation, redeeming the eye from the evil
which sin had caused, He needed to sacrifice Himself.
He opened the blind physical eye with His saliva;
He gives light to the dark soul by His sweat and
His blood. How different was the way of Christ in
this miracle from the magician's manner, in which,
without any trouble to himself, the friends of the
blind man thought he was to be cured. This kind
cometh only by fasting and prayer, by toil, and loss,
and suffering. Jesus put His hands upon the blind
man in token of His sympathy, of His desire to enter
into closest fellowship with him, and was afflicted in
his affliction—the only condition upon which any true
healing can be done. And then the question if he
saw anything, and the reply of the man that he saw