Diseases of the Bible / by Risdon Bennett.

  • James Risdon Bennett
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the Bible / by Risdon Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

    81/152 (page 77)
    Whether cataract, or any other form of congenital defect, was the cause of the blindness, it is impossible to suppose that it was by any inherent virtue in the subsidiary means employed, no doubt for wise reasons, by the Divine Healer, that sight was given to ' one born blind.' 'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world,' said Jesus. ' When He had thus spoken. He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him. Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.' ' And it was the Sabbath, day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes.' Were such proceedings enjoined by our Lord with the view of rendering manifest His exercise of supernatural power and the inadequacy of the natural agents em- ployed? Or was it more signally to condemn the Pharisaic making void the law, and to show that the Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath ? The case mentioned by St. Mark ^, where the restoration to sight was not at once complete, but by a double exercise of Divine power, seems still more distinctly to show that the cure was not due in any way to the natural external means employed. The description given by this man, when only partially in possession of sight, that' he saw men as trees walking,' rather indicates that he had not always been blind. It was only when Christ had put ' His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up,' that ' he was restored, and saw every man clearly.' The word ' restored' (airoKaTeaTdOT]), whilst showing that sight had at one time been possessed, throws no light on the cause of the blindness. Cataract, when not strictly * Mark viii. 22-26.