to them of the Father; nevertheless, when he foretold his own death, saying, "When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself," many seemed conscious of the presence of the invisible God, and seemed to catch such glimpses of the unseen and eternal world as led them to believe on him. For a moment they seemed to exercise real faith and experience the power that afterwards should go forth from an uplifted Savior. To these wavering ones, who seemed not far from the kingdom, to the Jews that believed on him and seemed to be his disciples, Jesus said, "If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

These words, that seemed designed and adapted to confirm the faith of the wavering, were the tests of their faith, and the wind that drove some of them away. They were offended by the promise that they should be made free, and said, "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest thou, ye shall be made free?" Their pride was offended. They probably did not mean to assert what was so manifestly false when they said that they were never in bondage to any man. They did not recognize their political bondage as interfering with the real individual liberty of the children of Abraham. They might be under the dominion of a heathen government, but their consciences were not enslaved. Our Lord seemed to attach this meaning to their claim of freedom, and said in reply, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, every one that committeth sin is the bond servant of sin."

He met them on their own ground. He had not been thinking of their bondage to the Romans, and had not been promising them deliverance from the Roman yoke

He had been look

when he had offered them freedom. ing at their real bondage, as the slaves of sin and the servants of the evil one, and he had offered them freedom from this real slavery, if they would continue in his word. He saw them in real slavery, and he added, "If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Then he proceeded to point out their sin and refute their claim to be in the real sense the children of Abraham. He said, "I know that ye are Abraham's seed, yet ye seek to kill me, because my word hath not free course in you. I speak the things which I have seen with my Father; and ye also do the things which ye have heard from your father."

Whey they had asserted that they were free, they had ignored the fact that they were in national subjection to Rome, and our Lord proceeded to talk with them of this higher liberty. They claimed to be Abraham's seed, but he showed that they were only in a natural, not in the real sense, Abraham's seed; that God was his Father and that they had another father whose spirit they manifested and whose works they did. When they repeated the claim to be Abraham's seed, Jesus said, "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham; but now ye seek to kill me, a man that told you the truth, which I heard from God; this did not Abraham. Ye do the works of your father."

To these words of Jesus, that took them back further than Abraham, the Jews replied, saying, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, God." But Christ met this claim with the unanswerable argument, "If God were your Father you would love me; for I came forth and am come from God," and he added, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer in the begin

ning and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father thereof. Because I say the truth ye believe me not. Which of you convicteth me of sin? If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth the words of God; for this cause ye hear them not, because ye are not of God."

This discussion that began with an address to those who believed on him, had rapidly developed into open rupture and irreconcilable conflict. It was not merely a conflict between men; it was a conflict of light with darkness, of truth with falsehood, of God with the evil one. In this discussion Jesus revealed the two opposing powers, and proclaimed himself the representative of truth and of God the Father, while his enemies were in reality the representatives of falsehood, murder and the devil. He declared that the Jews did not receive his message and love him because they were filled with the spirit of enmity against God and truth.

To the charge that they were the enemies of God and the children of the devil, the Jews replied by accusing Jesus of being a Samaritan and having a demon. They certainly did not mean to assert that he was really a Samaritan in nationality; for they had called him a Galilean. The epithet, Samaritan, was about the equivalent of outcast, alien, heretic; and, followed by the declaration that he had a demon, was equivalent to saying that Jesus was the representative of falsehood and the evil one, and that he was not a true child of Abraham-that he was what he had accused them of being. Our Lord patiently denied their charge, declaring that he honoured the Father, and added, "If a man keep my words, he shall never see death." To this new and wondrous claim they replied, "Now we know that thou hast

a demon. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my words he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham ....Whom makest thou thyself?"

Instead of giving a direct answer to this question, that he had already answered more than once, Jesus replied, "If I glorify myself my glory is nothing; it is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom ye say that he is your God, and ye have not known him; but I know him, and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be like unto you, a liar; but I know him and keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he was glad."

saw it, and

It is not surprising that the Jews should nearly lose sight of the charge made against them in this new claim that Abraham, their natural father, had seen Jesus Christ's day. Abraham had lived about twenty centuries before Jesus was born, and yet Jesus declared that Abraham, their great and remote ancestor, had seen his day. In their surprise they could only say, "Thou are not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" To this question Jesus replied by making a still more astounding claim, as he said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was I am." Knowing, as they did, the wondrous revelation of God to Moses at Mt. Sinai, as the I AM, these Jews could hardly fail to see the meaning of our Lord's words. They saw a claim to divine, eternal pre-existence, and, as they heard this claim, which, to their unbelieving minds, seemed blasphemy, they took up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

XLVI

HEALING THE MAN BORN BLIND

John 9:25. "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind now

I see."

(John 9:1-10:2; Luke 11:1-13.)

IN the eighth chapter of the Gospel by John we have

I

an account of Christ's claiming divine attributes,

and of the consequent outburst of Jewish wrath from which he escaped by hiding himself or by passing unobserved through the excited and angry multitude. Whether the healing of the blind man, and the discussion recorded in the ninth and the first part of the tenth chapters took place very soon afterwards may be questioned; they certainly did not occur the same day, for the octave of the feast of tabernacles was not the Sabbath, and the blind man was healed on the Sabbath day. Taking into consideration all the evident facts, it may be inferred, with a good degree of confidence, that the discussion in the treasury and in the porch of the temple, recorded John 8, took place on Friday afternoon, and that Jesus spent the night with his disciples outside the city, and that he returned to the temple on Sabbath morning. If this inference be correct, it is possible that the event recorded Luke 11: 1-13, may have occurred on the night that intervened between the teaching in the treasury and the healing of the man born blind.

On the evening of the eighth day of the feast Jesus passed quickly and quietly from the temple and out of