Where is the spiritual disease that He cannot take away? He can open the eyes of the most sinful and ignorant, and make them see things they never saw before. He can send light into the darkest heart, and cause blindness and preju- dice to pass away.
Surely, if we are not saved, the fault will be all our own. There lives at God's right hand One who can heal us if we apply to Him. Let us take heed lest those solemn words are found true of us, — " Light is come into the world : but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." " Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life." (John iii. 19 ; v. 40.)
Notes. John IX. 1—12.
1. — [And as Jesus passed by.'] The Greek word rendered " passed by," is the same as the word so rendered in the preceding verse, at the end of the last chapter. — Some think, from this repetition, that the miracle recorded here took place immedi- ately after the events of the last chapter, without the least break or interruption ; and that it was as our Lord was retiring from the temple, after the attempt of the Jews to stone Him, that He saw the blind man. — Others, however, think that an in- terval of time must have elapsed, partly because it seems improbable that our Lord and His disciples would all be able to withdraw themselves quietly from an angry mob, and calmly stand still near the scene of attempted violence to attend to a blind man, and partly because it is the manner of St. John's Gospel to pass from one event to another, sometimes without intimating that there is any change of time or place. Thus, John v. 19; yi. 25, 43,59; vii. 28—33. The point, however, is not one of any practical importance.
Chemnitius holds strongly that an interval of two months comes iu here, and that our Lord spent that time in a visitation of the towns and villages of Judaea, as related in Luke xiii. 22. He thinks that He thus occupied the two months after the feast of tabernacles, and that He returned to Jerusalem shortly be- fore the feast of dedication, in winter. The main objection to this theory seems to be, that it is not the natural conclusion we should draw from the text.
Gualter, Ferus, Ecolampadius, and Musculus maintain, on the other hand, that there is a close and intentional connection be- tween this chapter and the preceding one. They think that oar Lord desired to show, by deed as well as word, that He was