At the Feast of Dedication

164:3.1The next morn­ing the three went over to Martha’s home at Beth­any for break­fast and then went im­me­di­ately into Je­ru­sa­lem. This Sab­bath morn­ing, as Je­sus and his two apos­tles drew near the tem­ple, they en­coun­tered a well-known beg­gar, a man who had been born blind, sit­ting at his usual place. Al­though these men­di­cants did not so­licit or re­ceive alms on the Sab­bath day, they were per­mit­ted thus to sit in their usual places. Je­sus paused and looked upon the beg­gar. As he gazed upon this man who had been born blind, the idea came into his mind as to how he would once more bring his mis­sion on earth to the no­tice of the San­hedrin and the other Jew­ish lead­ers and re­li­gious teach­ers.

164:3.2As the Mas­ter stood there be­fore the blind man, en­grossed in deep thought, Na­than­iel, pon­der­ing the pos­si­ble cause of this man’s blind­ness, asked: “Mas­ter, who did sin, this man or his par­ents, that he should be born blind?”

164:3.3The rab­bis taught that all such cases of blind­ness from birth were caused by sin. Not only were chil­dren con­ceived and born in sin, but a child could be born blind as a pun­ish­ment for some spe­cific sin com­mit­ted by its fa­ther. They even taught that a child it­self might sin be­fore it was born into the world. They also taught that such de­fects could be caused by some sin or other in­dul­gence of the mother while car­ry­ing the child.

164:3.4There was, through­out all these re­gions, a lin­ger­ing be­lief in rein­car­na­tion. The older Jew­ish teach­ers, to­gether with Plato, Philo, and many of the Es­senes, tol­er­ated the the­ory that men may reap in one in­car­na­tion what they have sown in a pre­vi­ous ex­is­tence; thus in one life they were be­lieved to be ex­pi­at­ing the sins com­mit­ted in pre­ced­ing lives. The Mas­ter found it dif­fi­cult to make men be­lieve that their souls had not had pre­vi­ous ex­is­tences.

164:3.5How­ever, in­con­sis­tent as it seems, while such blind­ness was sup­posed to be the re­sult of sin, the Jews held that it was mer­i­to­ri­ous in a high de­gree to give alms to these blind beg­gars. It was the cus­tom of these blind men con­stantly to chant to the passers-by, “O ten­der­hearted, gain merit by as­sist­ing the blind.”

164:3.6Je­sus en­tered into the dis­cus­sion of this case with Na­than­iel and Thomas, not only be­cause he had al­ready de­cided to use this blind man as the means of that day bring­ing his mis­sion once more promi­nently to the no­tice of the Jew­ish lead­ers, but also be­cause he al­ways en­cour­aged his apos­tles to seek for the true causes of all phe­nom­ena, nat­u­ral or spir­i­tual. He had of­ten warned them to avoid the com­mon ten­dency to as­sign spir­i­tual causes to com­mon­place phys­i­cal events.

164:3.7Je­sus de­cided to use this beg­gar in his plans for that day’s work, but be­fore do­ing any­thing for the blind man, Josiah by name, he pro­ceeded to an­swer Na­than­iel’s ques­tion. Said the Mas­ter: “Nei­ther did this man sin nor his par­ents that the works of God might be man­i­fest in him. This blind­ness has come upon him in the nat­u­ral course of events, but we must now do the works of Him who sent me, while it is still day, for the night will cer­tainly come when it will be im­pos­si­ble to do the work we are about to per­form. When I am in the world, I am the light of the world, but in only a lit­tle while I will not be with you.”

164:3.8When Je­sus had spo­ken, he said to Na­than­iel and Thomas: “Let us cre­ate the sight of this blind man on this Sab­bath day that the scribes and Phar­isees may have the full oc­ca­sion which they seek for ac­cus­ing the Son of Man.” Then, stoop­ing over, he spat on the ground and mixed the clay with the spit­tle, and speak­ing of all this so that the blind man could hear, he went up to Josiah and put the clay over his sight­less eyes, say­ing: “Go, my son, wash away this clay in the pool of Siloam, and im­me­di­ately you shall re­ceive your sight.” And when Josiah had so washed in the pool of Siloam, he re­turned to his friends and fam­ily, see­ing.

164:3.9Hav­ing al­ways been a beg­gar, he knew noth­ing else; so, when the first ex­cite­ment of the cre­ation of his sight had passed, he re­turned to his usual place of alms-seek­ing. His friends, neigh­bors, and all who had known him afore­time, when they ob­served that he could see, all said, “Is this not Josiah the blind beg­gar?” Some said it was he, while oth­ers said, “No, it is one like him, but this man can see.” But when they asked the man him­self, he an­swered, “I am he.”

164:3.10When they be­gan to in­quire of him how he was able to see, he an­swered them: “A man called Je­sus came by this way, and when talk­ing about me with his friends, he made clay with spit­tle, anointed my eyes, and di­rected that I should go and wash in the pool of Siloam. I did what this man told me, and im­me­di­ately I re­ceived my sight. And that is only a few hours ago. I do not yet know the mean­ing of much that I see.” And when the peo­ple who be­gan to gather about him asked where they could find the strange man who had healed him, Josiah could an­swer only that he did not know.

164:3.11This is one of the strangest of all the Mas­ter’s mir­a­cles. This man did not ask for heal­ing. He did not know that the Je­sus who had di­rected him to wash at Siloam, and who had prom­ised him vi­sion, was the prophet of Gal­i­lee who had preached in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the feast of taber­na­cles. This man had lit­tle faith that he would re­ceive his sight, but the peo­ple of that day had great faith in the ef­fi­cacy of the spit­tle of a great or holy man; and from Je­sus’ con­ver­sa­tion with Na­than­iel and Thomas, Josiah had con­cluded that his would-be bene­fac­tor was a great man, a learned teacher or a holy prophet; ac­cord­ingly he did as Je­sus di­rected him.

164:3.12Je­sus made use of the clay and the spit­tle and di­rected him to wash in the sym­bolic pool of Siloam for three rea­sons:

164:3.131. This was not a mir­a­cle re­sponse to the in­di­vid­ual’s faith. This was a won­der which Je­sus chose to per­form for a pur­pose of his own, but which he so ar­ranged that this man might de­rive last­ing ben­e­fit there­from.

164:3.142. As the blind man had not asked for heal­ing, and since the faith he had was slight, these ma­te­rial acts were sug­gested for the pur­pose of en­cour­ag­ing him. He did be­lieve in the su­per­sti­tion of the ef­fi­cacy of spit­tle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisa­cred place. But he would hardly have gone there had it not been nec­es­sary to wash away the clay of his anoint­ing. There was just enough cer­e­mony about the trans­ac­tion to in­duce him to act.

164:3.153. But Je­sus had a third rea­son for re­sort­ing to these ma­te­rial means in con­nec­tion with this unique trans­ac­tion: This was a mir­a­cle wrought purely in obe­di­ence to his own choos­ing, and thereby he de­sired to teach his fol­low­ers of that day and all sub­se­quent ages to re­frain from de­spis­ing or ne­glect­ing ma­te­rial means in the heal­ing of the sick. He wanted to teach them that they must cease to re­gard mir­a­cles as the only method of cur­ing hu­man dis­eases.

164:3.16Je­sus gave this man his sight by mirac­u­lous work­ing, on this Sab­bath morn­ing and in Je­ru­sa­lem near the tem­ple, for the prime pur­pose of mak­ing this act an open chal­lenge to the San­hedrin and all the Jew­ish teach­ers and re­li­gious lead­ers. This was his way of pro­claim­ing an open break with the Phar­isees. He was al­ways pos­i­tive in ev­ery­thing he did. And it was for the pur­pose of bring­ing these mat­ters be­fore the San­hedrin that Je­sus brought his two apos­tles to this man early in the af­ter­noon of this Sab­bath day and de­lib­er­ately pro­voked those dis­cus­sions which com­pelled the Phar­isees to take no­tice of the mir­a­cle.