One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.
Truly did Christ say, “I came not to send peace on the earth.” Little did the man dream of the stir the miracle would make. So our blessings often get us into trouble, and become tests of character. The man here was tested as to whether he would stand by the truth. Let us not imagine that we can travel through life unchallenged. All the circumstances here are of a deeply interesting character.
1. Look at the parents. Sometimes you will find character transmitted with marvellous accuracy. “Like parents, like children.” Occasionally children degenerate from the type of their parents, and in others are a manifest improvement. This seems to have been the case with this young man. His parents were timid. This fear of man always brings a snare. What multitudes there are who dare not tell the truth or do the right for fear of the Gentiles, or the Church, society, or clique. There is no hope for them but in that perfect love which “casteth out fear.”
2. Look at the Pharisees. They heard enough, surely, for conviction, but they were afraid of the conclusion, and hence sought to terrify the parents and extract a contradiction from the young man. Then they reviled him. Men must have keen eyes who can detect in these men any of that instinctive love of truth which is vaunted as the glorious attribute of humanity. “Men love darkness,” etc., is the testimony alike of Scripture and experience. Men are much more anxious to have the truth on their side than to be on the side of truth. The mind does not turn to the truth as the flower turns to the sun. No one is very sanguine of dislodging men from a theology which screens them in their sins, or in separating them from an iniquitous traffic in which they are gaining wealth; and the more truth you put before them, the more they will hate both you and it.
3. Note, as in the case of the young man, that experimental evidence of religion is marked by
I. ITS CERTAINTY. “One thing I know.”
1. It is too common to imagine that the term knowledge ought to be restricted to science, and is too strong to be introduced into the realm of religion, where we can only expect strong probability. But it would be strange if the greatest and most essential realities were the most doubtful.
Men think of religion as something shadowy and impalpable. They can understand what can be placed on a table and seen and fingered, but to talk of strong and weak faith, high and low hopes, knowing whom you have believed, etc., as fanaticism.
2. It must be acknowledged that religious assurance does not rest on precisely the same grounds as in other relations. From the fact that religion involves the exercise of the moral faculties, its evidence must not be such as to overbear irresistibly these moral conditions. A religion that should make its evidence glare upon us like the sun would be no religion at all. If religion be the willing service of the soul, the soul must be left free in its exercise. To leave no room for doubt would be to reduce religion to the low level of material things. God is not as visible as His universe; but those who are willing to see Him come at length to believe in Him as firmly as in the universe, and just as they say every house is built by some man, whether they have seen him or not, so they exclaim, “He that built all things is God.”
3. With this exclamation we affirm that the evidence which God has supplied to give the soul religious assurance is as abundant as any that He has given us on any matter. There is in the Word of God, and may be in our life, enough evidence to make our salvation the most assured thing in the universe. Other evidences are of great value. When men are showing the actual rooting of Christianity in the soil of history, it is for us to welcome their efforts. But this sort of evidence must be inaccessible to many. “To the poor the gospel is preached,” and this preaching was meant to be its own light and proof, so that men should say, “One thing I know,” etc.
4. When one carries his evidence within him he is thrice armed. Not that every strong feeling indicates faith. We may have a fanatical joy, and be the dupes of sentimentalisms and early prejudices. But where we can distinctly recognize that we are not what we once were; that God, who was scarcely at the circumference of our life, is now its centre; that Christ, who was once a root out of a dry ground, is not the altogether lovely, etc., this is evidence that can withstand the assaults of men and devils.
II. ITS MODESTY. “One thing.” He strictly stated the facts as he knew them. What is required of a witness is to testify what he knows, and no more. His thoughts and speculations will compromise his evidence and render it worthless. Had the man reasoned with the learned Pharisees they would have worsted him. He did not philosophize about the mode of his cure, because he knew nothing about it. And so with spiritual illumination. We can form no philosophy of salvation. It transcends our reason. It is accomplished in different ways, as in the case of Lydia and the jailor. Sometimes men know the time and instrumentality; sometimes they do not. The main thing is, Am I saved? Are these doctrines you cannot comprehend? Do men puzzle you with the mysteries of the Trinity, the origin of evil, Providence, prophecy? Oppose to them the one thing you know.
1. “One thing.” It might seem a scanty knowledge, but it is with knowledge, as other things, its value is determined by what constitutes its object matter. You might possess a thousand jewels, but one Kohinoor would outweigh them all.
2. “One thing,” but what a thing--the one thing needful. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
The blind man’s creed
1. A whole chapter is taken up with this poor man. This is unusual. Though an author be inspired, we can tell what he enjoys. An evangelist, as well as a Gibbon, betrays his interest and his sympathies.
2. In some unusual way the blind man was wrought into the plan of Christ’s ministry. He had been born blind, and remained so that when Jesus passed by he might be ready to be healed by Him. All lives and events are wrought into that scheme.
3. The blind man was the first confessor. He was the sort of person that our Lord found it pleasant to do something for. He was ready to do what he could for himself, and what he could not do the Lord would do for him. Unlike Naaman, willingness was one characteristic of him, sturdiness was another. He spoke his mind at the risk of excommunication. His thoughts were distinct, and therefore his utterances were so. Crisp thinking makes crisp speaking. Let us look at his creed.
I. IT WAS SHORT. A creed with one article. Soon it enlarged, but it all developed out of this “one thing,” etc. It is no matter whether a creed be long or short, provided a man believes it as this man believes his. What would a Christian be capable of if he so believed the Apostles’ Creed? If a creed is believed, the longer it is the better; otherwise the shorter the better. Creed is like stature, it has to be reached by the individual, by slow growth from a small beginning. The vitality of a seed will determine how much will come out of it. Every fire begins with a spark. Some of us are trying to believe too much; not more than is true, or more than we ought, but more than we have at present inward strength for. We may extinguish a fire by putting on too much fuel.
II. IT WAS FOUNDED IN EXPERIENCE. “I know I see.” You notice how close the connection between the creed and the confessor. His creed was not separable from himself. It was wrought in him, and so was one he could not forget. Whenever the sun shone or a star twinkled, he would feel his creed over again. We might be perplexed to tell what we believe if we had it not in print to refer to; but experience can dispense with type. We used to hear a good deal about experiencing religion: is the expression going because the thing is going? Christ works a work in me and I feel it. That is experiencing religion, although the feeling may be differently marked in different people. Even the truths of God to become my true creed have got to be reproduced in the soil of my own thinking and feeling. Faith is languid because experience is languid. The creed of our confessor began in one article, but it did not end there. Soon we hear him saying he believed that Christ was the Son of God. Our creeds have got to come out of our experience of God, and not out of our Prayer Book. That is a poor tree that looks and measures as it did a year ago. He is a poor believer who believes exactly as he did a year ago.
III. IT WAS PERSONAL AND PECULIAR. Two living Christians cannot believe alike any more than two trees can grow alike. Two posts may. Two men only think alike, as they think not at all, but leave it to a third party to do it in their stead. Excessive doctrinal quietness implies lethargy. It is only dead men who never turn over. In nothing does a man need to be loyal to his individuality as in his religion. This is what makes the Bible so rich. The inspired writers did not throw away their peculiarities. Each man’s experience will be characteristic, and so, then, must his creed be that grows out of it. A man’s proper creed is the name we give to his individuality, when inspired by the Holy Ghost. Is it not a splendid tribute to Jesus that we can each of us come to Him with our peculiarity and find exactly that in Him which will meet and satisfy it? There is only one Christ, but He is like the sun, which shines on all objects and gives to each what helps it to be at its best. No two alike, the sea not the forest, etc., but each finding in the sun that which helps it to be itself perfectly. The poor man obtains from Him just what he needs, and the rich man, the Fijian, and the Greek, etc.
IV. IT DID NOT EMBARRASS ITSELF WITH MATTER FOREIGN TO THE MAIN POINT. “Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not.” The point with him was that he could see, not how he could see. Sight does not consist in understanding how we see, nor health in understanding the organs of the body, nor salvation in knowing how we are saved. The physician can cure an ignorant man as readily as a scholar, because his medicine does not depend on the intelligence of the patient; so Christ can be the physician of all, because salvation consists just simply in being saved. (C. H.Parkhurst, D. D.)
Experimental evidence
There is a man who is enjoying his food. He seems healthy and strong. He says he is so. You assure him, however, that his mode of life is wholly wrong. You have been reading some learned work on dietetics, and, full of theoretic wisdom, and you warn him that he is not observing the due proportions of nitrogen and carbon and the other elements, and that, according to your principles, he ought to be out of health and ready to perish. With what calmness he listens to your serious homily, and smiles as he finishes his repast! He is but an ignorant man, knows nothing about the high-sounding names you have used to denote the chemical constituents of food, tells you that whether he is eating according to learned books or not he knows not, but one thing he knows, that what he does eat agrees with him, strengthens him, and enables him to do his work; and so he lets learned men and books talk on. A friend has been sick, and is now recovering. You ask him what medicine he has been taking, and on learning it you are astonished. On hearing who his physician is, you venture a doubt as to his qualifications, whereon the valetudinarian says, “Well, I know nothing about the properties of medicine, or the technical qualifications of the physician; but one thing I know, that every dose of the medicine has been to me like life from the dead.” This was the spirit of the reply of the healed man. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
“We know”
One cannot but notice how constantly the phrase “we know” occurs. The parents of the man used it thrice. The Pharisees have it on their lips in their first interview with him--“We know that this man is a sinner.” He answers, declining to affirm anything about the character of the Man Jesus, because he, for his part, “knows not,” but standing firmly by the solid reality which he “knows” in a very solid fashion, that his eyes have been opened. So we have the first encounter between knowledge which is ignorant and ignorance that knows, to the manifest victory of the latter. Again, in the second round, they try to overbear the cool sarcasm with their vehement assertion of knowledge that God spake to Moses, but by the admission that even their knowledge did not reach to the determination of the question of the origin of Jesus’ mission, lay themselves open to the sudden trust of keen-eyed, honest humility’s sharp rapier-like retort. “Herein is a marvellous thing,” that you know-alls, whose business it is to know where a professed miracle-worker comes from, “know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes.” “Now we know” (to use your own words) “that God heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will, him He heareth.” Then observe how, on both sides, a process is going on. The man is getting more and more light at each step. He begins with “A Man which is called Jesus.” Then he gets to a “prophet,” then he comes to “a worshipper of God, and one that does His will.” Then he comes to “If this man were not of God,” in some very special sense, “He can do nothing.” These are his own reflections, the working out of the impression made by the fact on an honest mind, and because he had so used the light which he had, therefore Jesus gives him more, and finds him with the question, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” Then the man who had shown himself so strong in his own convictions, so independent, and hard to cajole or coerce, shows himself now all docile and submissive, and ready to accept whatever Jesus says--“Lord, who is He, that I might believe on Him?” That was not credulity. He already knew enough of Christ to know that he ought to trust Him. And to his docility there is given the full revelation; and he hears the words which Pharisees and unrighteous men were not worthy to hear: “Thou hast both seen Him--with these eyes to which I have given sight--and it is He that talketh with thee.” Then intellectual conviction, moral reliance, and the utter prostration and devotion of the whole man bow him at Christ’s feet. “Lord, I believe; and he worshipped Him.” There is the story of the progress of an honest, ignorant soul that knew itself blind, into the illumination of perfect vision. And as He went upwards, so steadily and tragically, downwards went the others. For they had light, and they would not look at it; and it blasted and blinded them. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The power of a fact
This man, who is released from his native blindness by Christ, is one of the strongest characters which the Gospels paint for us about the person of our Lord. Follow him through the chapter, and through all its various situations and discussions, and you feel that he is the man of the most real manhood among them all--disciples, neighbours, parents, and Pharisees. Wherein does his great strength lie? What is it that makes him so real and firm a man? It is, I believe, the consciousness of a fact, a great fact, in his life’s history. “One thing I know,” he says, “that whereas I was blind, now I see. That is the great, wonderful event which has happened to me, which fills all my consciousness, before which everything else is little, which influences and colours everything, and the remembrance of which rules me.” In every knot of men which clusters around him, with their little wondering questions of curiosity or malice, he simply tells his one great fact. We can hardly think of him as the former beggar. He is too imperious for a beggar now.
1. See how this man first appears after his cure by Christ. The neighbours and his former acquaintance gather around him, and begin to question as to his identity: “Is not this he that sat and begged?” Some said, “Yes, this is he.” Others, “He is like him.” But he said, “I am he.” There is the first effect of the coming of this great fact into his life, to make him honest in regard to self. It is as if he had said, “Here is a great event that has happened to me, unprecedented and marvellous. I am its subject. Such an attention has been bestowed upon me and my wants and my condition as I never heard of, as shows that I am the object of care to a Divine mind and power. A new value has been given to my nature. I have a new, stronger sense of self. Yes, I am he. I was blind, and now I see. I will not leave you to dispute my identity.” That is the first great value of the consciousness of a fact in one’s life history, the new honest view of self and its value. Oh, my friends, the system which teaches us to know ourselves the best is that which brings the greatest fact into our history--the gospel and its fact. And yet multitudes of us go through life, while all about us, above us, and beneath us point to us, “Is not this one for whom Christ died? Is not this one of those wonderful saved human natures?” and we practically deny ourselves, because our consciousness is so dead.
2. Go on in the chapter to the next appearance of this man who knows one thing--the critical event of life. See how concentrated it makes him! They ask him, “Where is He, your healer?” He says, “I know not. All I know is this.” To know one great fact and to be full of it makes him unwilling to guess a conjecture about other things. He either knows or he knows not. He has learnt what true knowledge is. We should save much stumbling and sorrow in life if we would not so often build the air castles of conjecture and live in them as though their walls were of the solid masonry of real knowledge. The disaster is most serious in the spiritual sphere, when one does not know where to say, “I know,” and where “I know not,” when religion is only a broad field of conjecture. Many are anxious concerning such unessentials as the origin of evil, predestination, spiritualism, the exact nature of the future life, etc.; forgetful that, the one fact of practical religion--man’s salvation and purification by Christ--being known, you may for the present safely say, “I know not,” to other items which cannot be yet known in the same personal way.
3. The chapter goes on to furnish another instance of the strengthening value of this one possession of the healed man. It makes him a messenger, a continual repeater of his wonderful story, as often as he can relate it. Any man, however ignorant and humble, is listened to if he have a genuine event of life to tell. Facts never grow old. This man, the relater of a fact, represents Christianity. Christianity has gone on from age to age, from circle to circle, giving its simple, solid, eventful message--human redemption and enlightenment by Christ.
4. But, still again, as this man so full of his story tells it, the Pharisee says to him, “Give God the glory. Do not ascribe it to this Man. He is a sinner.” They endeavour to hush his statement by a command, “Do not say, He (Jesus) opened mine eyes.” That is to say, these men were striving to do what has been a very usual human infatuation--to legislate against events, by simple authority, as when the old Saxon king sat by the water’s edge and with his kingly decree forbad the sea to come nearer or its tide to rise higher. These men did not appreciate the firmness of a fact. They did not know that commands were merely pebbles that rebounded shattered from its rocky undisturbed surface. All men fall into this error--good men legislating against an evil fact, evil men legislating against a good fact. To bid it be different is nothing at all. This is another value of the blind man’s possession. He was instantly above all mere commands, all mere human assertion of power. This is the value of Christianity always--its exaltation of a man above earthly power. The world, by its persecution or force and might, says, “Deny Christ.” But if you conceive of Christ and His gospel as the world’s great fact, if His influence is an event in your own life, you will be able to answer, “How can I deny a fact? I should only stultify myself to do that. One thing I know, I was blind, and now I see. That will last after your command has been forgotten.” There is no fear, no servility in this man, who is armed with his great conscious fact of life, beggar as he had been of old. The Pharisees cast him out. Ay, and the worse for them. They east out the only man resting on solid truth, and remained upon their fictions.
5. Once more, as this man goes out into the outer cold solitariness of excommunication, yet happy and warm in the garment of the consciousness of that wonderful miracle, Christ meets him, and says, “Now you must believe on Me, for you have seen Me.” Think how it must have sounded, how the warm heart must have been doubly grateful for that word “seen.” “Yes I see at last, I see, I who was blind.” It is as if Christ were echoing his own thoughts, his own one piece of all-absorbing knowledge. Now, that piece of knowledge must lead to belief. Fact must lead to faith. A fact merely means a thing done, and there must be a doer, greater in his invisibility than the great thing itself in its visibility. That is the faith of Christianity; it rests on real events, on actual things done. It does not ask faith with no basis. But it furnishes the greatest event of history as a foundation, an event happening to us and yet not through our means; and any man full of that great event will say, “I will and must believe in its doer.” Just as the building which has the broadest base upon the ground can rise to the highest upward point in safety, so he who is fullest of the greatest seen fact of life is fullest also of the richest, most aspiring, most practical and most spiritual faith. (Fred Brooks.)
The experimental evidence of Christianity
Here we see a practical conviction of the claims of Christ set against speculative doubts of those claims; and so this dispute between the restored blind man and the Pharisees is a symbol of what often happens in the world. It would be easy to find men now who have doubts concerning Christianity born of intellectual inquiry, which they find it impossible to appease; while there is another class of persons who feel a confidence in Christianity born of inward experience, which it would be impossible to overthrow. And if two persons representing these two classes should meet and attempt a discussion, they could not understand each other, for their souls would not touch. The believing man could not confute nor dispel the doubts that would be reported to him by his opponent, because he had never felt those doubts, and could not judge of their validity. The sceptical man could receive no immediate aid from the practical conviction of the believer, for that conviction could not be translated from feeling into effective statement in words. One is troubled with doubts about the miracles; the other can tell only of the sweet peace of Christian duty and a sense of pardoned sin. One cannot see that the links are complete in the historical chain of evidence for the authenticity of the four Gospels; the other can only answer that the words of those Gospels have nourished his soul, and made life a more noble experience, and bereavement less painful, and the tomb less dark. One cannot be entirely sure that such a person as Christ ever lived; the other feels that it is his highest privilege to follow the spirit of the recorded Christ and to be a disciple of His published temper. One may anxiously be waiting for the last book by some great German theological scholar, to settle or confirm his wavering mind upon some point of the evidence; the other strengthens his faith by the daily responses that are vouchsafed to Christian prayers. One questions from a darkened intellect; the other answers from a sunlit soul. One cannot but say, from the force of the doubts which his philosophy has started, “As for this Man Jesus, I know not from whence He is”; the other replies, “Why, herein is a marvellous thing, that you know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes!” A truly Christian man, although he may never have looked into a volume of the evidence for the genuineness of the Christian records, feels a testimony for the Christian religion in his own heart which raises him above scepticism about the record. Jesus referred to this proof when He said Joh_7:17). Perhaps such a man had long been wholly selfish and worldly. But by being brought within the circle of Christian influences his best faculties have been awakened and developed. And now he sees life in a different light. The wisdom and goodness of God are suggested to him from every side of nature; it is a delight to cherish a sense of reliance upon the Deity and to feel at all times that God is the Father; the darkness of selfishness is exchanged for the deep satisfaction of devotion to duty, the slavery of passion for the peace of purity, the misery of fear for the joy of love, the fever thirst after worldly goods for the serene bliss of faith, and holy longings for the favour of God and the perfectness of Christ; existence is recognized as a spiritual privilege, death regarded as the door to immortality, and the universe becomes a temple for the worship of the Almighty. Find a heart in which this conversion of principles, feelings, and aims has been experienced, and you find a heart that feels an immovable conviction of the truth of Christianity. Its peace, its joys, its consciousness of spiritual health, its insight into a new world of which before it had no conception, all bear testimony to the reality of Christ’s religion. (T. Starr King.)
Experience the condition of Church membership
When Moody, the great evangelist, wanted to join the Church in Boston, under the pastor of which he had been awakened, he was questioned about doctrines, and seemed to know nothing about them.. He could only say, “Whereas I was blind, now I see.” He applied to this Church three times before he could get in. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)
An undoubted cure
George Moore once dislocated his shoulder, and after suffering great agony for weeks, all the surgeons failing to relieve him, he went to Mr. Hutton, the bone setter, who in a few minutes gave him lasting relief. He was much taken to task then by his professional friends for going to a quack. “Well,” said he, “quack or no quack, he cured me, and that was what I wanted. Whereas I was blind, now I see.” (S. Smiles.)
Living Christians an argument for Christianity
An unhappy woman who has associated herself with a notorious atheist in this country, went down to a great northern city in England to deliver a lecture against Christianity, and the object of her able deliverance was to prove that Christ was a myth. A great crowd of working men assembled to hear her, drawn together, as I believe they often are on such occasions, a good deal more by curiosity than by sympathy with the lecturer. When the lady had finished, a man got up at the other end of the room and said, “My friends, you know me. I have lived among you for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years ago I was a drunken brute. I used to beat my wife and make my home a hell upon earth. Now, this lady says that Jesus of Nazareth is a myth. I am not quite sure that I know what a myth is, but I suppose that she means that He never existed, or, at any rate, is not what we declare Him to be. Now, my friends, twenty-five years ago, when I was a drunken, wife-beating rascal, Jesus of Nazareth met me and opened my eyes, and I saw that I was a sinner, and He forgave my sins; and you know what a change took place in me then, and you know what sort of a man I have been for the last twenty-five years. Perhaps the lady will be kind enough to explain me.” Down he sat. The lady said that she could not explain him, and she did not deliver the two other lectures in that course, I have no doubt that she was perfectly familiar with all that Strauss has written, and with what Renan says, and with the difficulties which the great men of science have suggested, and she went down to that northern city flushed with the anticipation of victory; but there was one very awkward fact which she had overlooked--that there happened to be living in that very city a well-known man whose eyes Jesus of Nazareth had opened twenty-five years ago. What is the use of making most difficult and endless inquiries into the origin of ancient documents until you have explained me? And standing here addressing some whom I shall never meet again until we meet at the judgment seat, I present myself as a living witness. What you have to explain is me. My mind goes back twenty-three years, when, in a beautiful little village in Wales, Jesus of Nazareth opened my eyes, and I saw that He was my Saviour, and that God was my Father; and in that light I have been walking with perfect happiness for twenty-three years. That is what you have to explain, and you are in a very great difficulty, because there are so many of us. Two thousand years ago there was only one at Jerusalem, and they were able to dispose of him pretty quickly. They lost their tempers; and bullied him, and finally excommunicated him. But you cannot excommunicate us all. Let every man speak of that which he knows. (H. P. Hughes, M. A.)
Agnosticism and Christian experience
Is there a God? Don’t know! Is the soul immortal? Don’t know! If we should meet each other in the future world will we recognize each other? Don’t know! This man proposes to substitute the religion of “Don’t know” for the religion of “I know.” “I know whom I have believed.” “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Infidelity proposes to substitute a religion of awful negatives for our religion of glorious positives, showing right before us a world of reunion and ecstasy, and high companionship, and glorious worship, and stupendous victory; the mightiest joy of earth not high enough to reach to the base of the Himalaya of uplifted splendour awaiting all those who on the wings of Christian faith will soar toward it. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Conversion a real experience
This man knew that he could see. Possibly some of you have been decent people all your lives, and yet you do not know whether you are saved or not. This is poor religion. Cold comfort! Saved, and not know it! Surely it must be as lean a salvation as that man’s breakfast when he did not know whether he had eaten it or not. The salvation which comes of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is conscious salvation. Your eyes shall be so opened that you shall no longer question whether you can see. He could see, and he knew that he could see. Oh, that you would believe in Jesus, and know that you have believed and are saved! Oh, that you might get into a new world, and enter upon a new state of things altogether! May that which was totally unknown to you before be made known to you at this hour by Almighty grace. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Value of a personal knowledge of salvation
I recollect the lesson which I learned from my Sunday school class: I was taught, if the other boys were not. Though yet a youth, I was teaching the gospel to boys, and I said, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” One of them asked somewhat earnestly, “Teacher, are you saved?” I answered, “I hope so.” The boy replied, “Teacher, don’t you know?” As if he had been sent to push the matter home to me, he further inquired, “Teacher, have you believed?” I said, “Yes.” “Well, then,” he argued, “you are saved.” I was happy to answer, “Yes, I am”; but I had hardly dared to say that before. I found that if I had to teach other people the truth I must know and believe its sweet result upon myself. I believe, dear friends, that you will seldom comfort others except it be by the comfort with which you yourself are comforted of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The value of experience
A hundred thousand tongues may discourse to you about the sweetness of honey, but you can never have such knowledge of it as by taste. So a word full of books may tell you wonders of the things of God in religion, but you can never understand them exactly but by the taste of experience. (N. Caussin.)
Personas knowledge valuable
The first qualification, then, of a faithful witness is a personal knowledge of the facts to which he witnesses. If a witness in a court of justice begins to talk of what he thinks, feels, and believes, “Oh! hush, hush,” says the judge, “we can’t have that; we want to know what you know--what you have seen, heard, and felt of this case;” and these are the sort of witnesses Jesus Christ wants, who get up and say, “I know!” That is what the Lord Jesus Christ wants--people who know, who experience, who realize, who live the things they witness to. This is what the world is dying for--people who can get up and say, “I know.”
What did He to thee
The quibbles of infidelity
Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done the same question will be triumphantly asked again next year, as if nothing had ever been written on the subject; and as people in general, for one reason or other, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation, if it can be styled such, the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those of our friends, who have honesty and erudition, candour and patience, to study both sides of the question (chap. 10:25). (Bp. Horne.)
Infidelity can only go round and round the same topics in an eternal circle, without advancing one step further. It produces no new forces: it only brings those again into the field which have been so often baffled, maimed, and disabled, that in pity to them they ought to be dismissed, and discharged from any further service (Act_19:28; Act_19:34). (J. Seed.)
Will ye also be His disciples?--Bold irony this--to ask these stately, ruffled, scrupulous Sanhedrists. Whether he was really to regard them as anxious and sincere inquirers about the claims of the Nazarene prophet! Clearly here was a man whose presumptuous honesty would neither be bullied into suppression, or corrupted into a lie. He was quite impracticable. So, since authority, threats, blandishments had all failed, they broke into abuse, “Thou art His disciple,” etc. “Strange,” he replied, “that you should know nothing of a man who has wrought such a miracle as not even Moses wrought; and we know that neither he nor anyone else could have done it unless he was from God.” What! Shades of Hillel and Shammai! Was a mere blind beggar, a natural ignorant heretic, altogether born in sins, to be teaching them? Unable to control any longer their transport of indignation, they flung him out of the hall, and out of the synagogue. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
Thou art His disciple
I. THE CHARACTER OF A TRUE DISCIPLE. This was the first name attached to Christ’s followers. It is a correlative to His title, “Teacher”: hence they who received His instructions were His disciples. And when they obtained the more distinctive name of their Master, this was recognized, “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.” Names are but arbitrary signs of things, and are really characteristic no further than as the things themselves exist. The Christians were no worse for being called Nazarenes, and Judas was no better for being called an apostle. Hence the necessity of distinguishing between the proper and the lax use of words. A man may be a disciple universally or really. Such a distinction is coeval with the use of the term. “Many of His disciples went back,” “Ye are My disciples indeed.” A true disciple
1. Believingly embraces the doctrines of Christ. They are received into His heart as the basis of conduct; they are the mould which gives its impression to the character. Such doctrines as credible, require faith; as authoritative, bind; as graciously given, are to be used for the benefit of a guilty and erring mind. So close is the affinity between Christ and His truth, that believing His Word is believing in Him. But it is one thing to believe the gospel to be true, and another to believe its necessity to our own wellbeing; the former will make a man a disciple in name, the latter in truth.
2. Cherishes an ardent affection for Christ’s person. Faith is His word by realizing to the mind His great excellencies and gifts, engages its esteem, desire, and delight. It opens the springs of gratitude and awakens the purest sensibilities. This love is a master grace, leading a train of other virtues, which receive their highest worth from it.
3. Devotes himself to the cause of Christ--giving himself up to Christ’s disposal--living or dying. This devotedness includes self-denial, confession of Christ before men, lively activity in extending His kingdom.
II. THE NECESSITY AND IMPORTANCE OF BEING A TRUE DISCIPLE.
1. From the absolute requirement of God, “My son give me thy heart.” Everything short of this is robbery. He who delays obedience holds out his enmity against God; and can this succeed?
2. From a principle of consistency. Shall God be treated as we deem it base for man to be treated? In common affairs mere outward respect is insulting. With whom do men trifle when they assume the form of godliness without a care of the power.
3. From a regard to our safety and peace. (Congregational Remembrancer.)
