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storm; let us praise him for the calm; let us see him in all things; let us see him teaching the minister in his pulpit, and whispering to the newspaper editor in his room; let us hear him in all; let us recognise him in all; and let us feel, as we never felt before, that religion-true, vital religion, is the only thing worth living for, as it is the only thing in which we can happily die.*

* These remarks were made in the autumn of 1849, during the epidemic, the subduing, and sanctifying, and suggestive effects of which are now, alas, neither so deep nor so general as one once ventured to hope.

LECTURE XI.

BETHESDA AND ITS BLESSINGS.

After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole ? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked : and on the same day was the sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk? And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou

art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.—JOHN v. 1-18.

Ar what feast of the Jews this special miracle was wrought it is difficult to say; and it is not of very material moment that we should be able to determine. The feast is called " a feast of the Jews," that is, it was peculiar to the Jews. The moment, however, that Jesus touched it by his presence, that moment it was gone; for he was the end of all types; he was the substance of all shadows: and just as the shades of night depart when the sun rises above the horizon, so the feasts and fasts and institutions of the Jews passed away the moment that the Sun of righteousness shone upon them.

Bethesda, literally translated, means the house of mercy. The place is still traditionally pointed out; and in most books upon Palestine, a certain pool or deep well is alluded to as the pool of Bethesda; but Robinson, an American writer, in his Biblical Researches, has shown, and it seems to

me conclusively, that it is not the same; and that we do not know where it was. Nor does it much matter. The local is the circumstantial and the transient; the moral and the spiritual lessons of Bethesda endure now and for ever.

The pool, it seems, was either miraculously impregnated with medicinal virtue after an angel had stirred it, or it was permanently endued with that virtue, so that every one that stepped into it after it had been stirred by the angel, was healed of whatever disease he had. It is perhaps a distinction without a difference whether it was permanently medicinal, or made temporarily and specially so; for the high and true view of nature is his, who sees in nature One above it, and beyond it, and superior to it. We speak of causes and effects; we say that such a medicinal virtue is the cause of such a cure; we say that such a substance is the cause of such an effect; whereas when we have so spoken, we have not discovered causes, but only, to use the language of philosophers, sequences of phenomena, when we parade what are called secondary causes; and in each sequence is developed the power, the presence, and the energy of Deity. A cause may be no more related to what is called its effect

than one link in a chain may be the cause of the link that succeeds it: the one follows the other, but the one is not necessarily the cause of the other. And they are the true Christians and the right philosophers, who are not satisfied with tracing link after link, the one as depending on the other, till they find the whole chain fastened by its staple to the throne of God; and see God's energy and power transmitted along every link, and explain all effects by the fact that God is, and works, in them all.

It appears that at this pool, whether its virtues were permanently healing or only temporally so, there were multitudes of the halt, the lame, and the impotent. It reminds one of our modern watering-places, as they are called. What are Cheltenham, Harrowgate, Leamington, but modern Bethesdas? What are the multitudes in the inns that are there but crowds of impotent folk, and blind, and maimed, and sick, waiting for the health which they have lost? And what is the medicinal virtue in these wells? The inspiration, the gift of the goodness of God—as much so, as truly so, as if an angel had left the skies, descended into each, and had given them all their healing virtues.

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