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

OF ONE BLIND AT BETHSAIDA 321
sight is naturally acquired, and stamps the narrative
with the watermark of truth. We naturally imagine
that vision is acquired at once ; that we have only
to open our eyes, and to see at a glance everything
in its proper form and size and colour and distance.
The ancients all had this idea. When Mark wrote
his Gospel, and for seventeen hundred years afterwards,
it was never dreamt that the eye itself did
not from the very beginning judge of figures, magnitudes,
situations, and distances. It was reserved for
our modern philosophers and physiologists to find
out that it is only gradually the eye learns to judge
of the outlines of things, how far distant anything
is from us, and how large or small any object is.
This knowledge is acquired in earliest infancy in
a way so gradual and unmarked that we are unconscious
of it. What appears now in mature life to
be entirely supplied by sight, a natural endowment
of the eye, has been given in a great measure
by the sense of touch. Our clear and distinct perception
instantaneously of the figures of objects, and
of their size and relation to one another, has been
gained progressively by the combined exercise of
sight and touch. And this is shown in a remarkab
1 ^ manner by the coincidence between our Saviour
touching the eyes of the blind man, and his
acquiring the power of vision by the combined action
of the light of the sun and the hand of man. This
coincidence between touch and sight in the power
of vision, was altogether unknown when Mark related
the miracle ; and its discovery in far later years is a
striking proof that our Lord wrought His miracle,
not in contradiction to the law of nature, but in the
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