BOOK IV a Moed K. 16 a; Shev. 36 a; Baba Mez. 59 b b Shev. 36 a: Sanh, 107 b printed in the Chas ronoth ha-Shas, p. 25 b • Comp. The greater excommunication (Niddui)—which, happily, could only be pronounced in an assembly of ten-must have been terrible, being accompanied by curses,a1 and, at a later period, sometimes proclaimed with the blast of the horn. If the person so visited occupied an honourable position, it was the custom to intimate his sentence in a euphemistic manner, such as: 'It seems to me that thy companions are separating themselves from thee.' He who was so, or similarly addressed, would only too well understand its meaning. Henceforth he would sit on the ground, and bear himself like one in deep mourning. He would allow his beard and hair to grow wild and shaggy; he would not bathe, nor anoint himself; he would not be admitted into any assembly of ten men, neither to public prayer, nor to the Academy; though he might either teach, or be taught by, single individuals. Nay, as if he were a leper, people would keep at a distance of four cubits from him. If he died, stones were cast on his coffin, nor was he allowed the honour of the ordinary funeral, nor were they to mourn for him. Still more terrible was the final excommunication, or Cherem, when a ban of indefinite duration was laid on a man. Henceforth he was like one dead. He was not allowed to study with others, no intercourse was to be held with him, he was not even to be shown the road. He might, indeed, buy the necessaries of life, but it was forbidden to eat or drink with such an one.c We can understand, how everyone would dread such an anathema. But when we remember, what it would involve to persons in the rank of life, and so miserably poor as the parents of that blind man, we no longer wonder at their evasion of the question put by the Sanhedrin. And if we ask ourselves, on what ground so terrible a punishment could be inflicted to all time and in every place-for the ban once pronounced applied everywhere-simply for the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the answer is not difficult. The Rabbinists enumerate twenty-four grounds for excommunication, of which more than one might serve the purpose of the Pharisees. But in general, to resist the authority of the Scribes, or any of their decrees, or to lead others either away from the commandments,' or to what was regarded as profanation of the Divine Name, was sufficient to incur the ban, while it must be borne in mind, that if a teacher was Jer. Moed excommunicated, all his disciples were excommunicated with him.'" K. 81 d, about the middle 1 Buxtorf here reminds us of 1 Cor. v. 5. 2 There our Lord is said to have been anathematised to the sound of 400 trumpets. The passage does not appear in the expurgated editions of the Talmud. THE HEALED MAN BEFORE THE PHARISEES. As nothing could be elicited from his parents, the man who had been blind was once more summoned before the Pharisees. It was no longer to inquire into the reality of his alleged blindness, nor to ask about the cure, but simply to demand of him recantation, though this was put in the most specious manner. Thou hast been healed: own that it was only by God's Hand miraculously stretched forth,' and that this man' had nothing to do with it, save that the coincidence may have been allowed to try the faith of Israel. It could not have been Jesus Who had done it, for they knew Him to be a sinner.' Of the two alternatives they had chosen the absolute rightness of their own Sabbath-traditions as against the evidence of His Miracles. Virtually, then, this was the condemnation of Christ and the apotheosis of traditionalism. And yet, false as their conclusion was, there was this truth in their premisses, that they judged of miracles by the moral evidence in regard to Him, Who was represented as working them. But he who had been healed of his blindness was not to be so betrayed into a denunciation of his great Physician. The simplicity and earnestness of his convictions enabled him to gain even a logical victory. It was his turn now to bring back the question to the issue which they had originally raised; and we admire it all the more, as we remember the consequences to this poor man of thus daring the Pharisees. As against their opinion about Jesus, as to the correctness of which neither he nor others could have direct knowledge, there was the unquestionable fact of his healing, of which he had personal knowledge. The renewed inquiry now by the Pharisees, as to the manner in which Jesus had healed him, might have had for its object to betray the man into a positive confession, or to elicit something demoniacal in the mode of the cure. The blind man had now fully the advantage. He had already told them; why the renewed inquiry? As he put it half ironically: Was it because they felt the wrongness of their own position, and that they should become His disciples? It stung them to the quick; they lost all self-possession, and with this their moral defeat became complete. Thou art the disciple of that man, but we (according to the favourite phrase) are the disciples of Moses.' Of the Divine Mission of Moses they knew, but of the Mission of Jesus they knew nothing. The unlettered The common view (Meyer, Watkins, Westcott) is, that the expression, 'Give glory to God' was merely a formula of solemn adjuration, like Josh. vii. 19. But even so, as Canon Westcott remarks, ་ it implies that the cure was due directly 2 In the original: 'If He is a sinner, I 185 CHAP. IX BOOK IV a Ber. 6 b; man had now the full advantage in the controversy. In this, indeed,' there was 'the marvellous,' that the leaders of Israel should confess themselves ignorant of the authority of One, Who had power to open the eyes of the blind-a marvel which had never before been witnessed. If He had that power, whence had He obtained it, and why? It could only have been from God. They said, He was a sinner-and yet there was no principle more frequently repeated by the Rabbis," than that answers to prayer depended on a man being devout' and doing the Will of God. There could therefore be only one inference: If Jesus had not Divine Authority, He could not have had Divine Power. The argument was unanswerable, and in its unanswerableness shows us, not indeed the purpose, but the evidential force of Christ's Miracles. In one sense they had no purpose, or rather were purpose to themselves, being the forthbursting of His Power and the manifestation of His Being and Mission, of which latter, as applied to things physical, they were part. But the truthful reasoning of that untutored man, which confounded the acuteness of the sages, shows the effect of these manifestations on all whose hearts were open to the truth. The Pharisees had nothing to answer, and, as not unfrequently in analogous cases, could only, in their fury, cast him out with bitter reproaches. Would he teach them-he, whose very disease showed him to have been a child conceived and born in sin, and who, ever since his birth, had been among ignorant, Law-neglecting 'sinners'? But there was Another, Who watched and knew him: He Whom, so far as he knew, he had dared to confess, and for Whom he was content to suffer. Let him now have the reward of his faith, even its completion; and so shall it become manifest to all time, how, as we follow and cherish the better light, it riseth upon us in all its brightness, and that faithfulness in little bringeth the greater stewardship. Tenderly did Jesus seek him out, wherever it may have been; and, as He found him, this one question did He ask, whether the conviction of his experience was not growing into the higher faith of the yet unseen: 'Dost thou believe on the Son of God?'1 He had had personal experience of Him-was not that such as to lead up to the higher faith? And is it not always so, that the higher faith is based on the conviction of personal experience that we believe on With all respect for such authority as that of Professors Westcott and Hort ('The N. T.' p. 212), I must strongly repudiate the reading 'Son of Man,' instead of Son of God.' Admittedly, the evidence for the two readings is evenly balanced, and the internal evidence seems to me strongly in favour of the reading 'Son of God.' THE HEALED MAN IN PRESENCE OF THE CHRIST. Him as the Son of God, because we have experience of Him as the God-sent, Who has Divine Power, and has opened the eyes of the blind-born-and Who has done to us what had never been done by any other in the world? Thus is faith always the child of experience, and yet its father also; faith not without experience, and yet beyond experience; faith not superseded by experience, but made reasonable by it. To such a soul it needed only the directing Word of Christ. And Who is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him?' It seems as if the question of Jesus had kindled in him the conviction of what was the right answer. We almost see how, like a well of living water, the words sprang gladsome from his inmost heart, and how he looked up expectant on Jesus. To such readiness of faith there could be only one answer. In language more plain than He had ever before used, Jesus answered, and with immediate confession of implicit faith the man lowly worshipped.' And so it was, that the first time he saw his Deliverer, it was to worship Him. It was the highest stage yet attained. What contrast this faith and worship of the poor, unlettered man, once blind, now in every sense seeing, to the blindness of judgment which had fallen on those who were the leaders of Israel! The cause alike of the one and the other was the Person of the Christ. For our relationship to Him determines sight or blindness, as we either receive the evidence of what He is from what He indubitably does, or reject it, because we hold by our own false conceptions of God and of what His Will to us is. And so is Christ also for 'judgment.' There were those who still followed Him—not convinced by, nor as yet decided against Him-Pharisees, who well understood the application of His Words. Formally, it had been a contest between traditionalism and the Work of Christ. They also were traditionalists -were they also blind? But, nay, they had misunderstood Him by leaving out the moral element, thus showing themselves blind indeed. It was not the calamity of blindness; but it was a blindness in which they were guilty, and for which they were responsible, which indeed was the result of their deliberate choice: therefore their sin-not their blindness only-remained! 1 προσεκύνησεν. The word is never used by St. John of mere respect for man, but always implies Divine worship. In the Gospel it occurs ch. iv. 20–24; ix. 38; xii. 20; and twenty-three times in the Book 187 CHAP. IX CHAPTER X. THE GOOD SHEPHERD AND HIS ONE FLOCK LAST DISCOURSE AT THE BOOK (St. John x. 1-21.) THE closing words which Jesus had spoken to those Pharisees who followed Him breathe the sadness of expected near judgment, rather than the hopefulness of expostulation. And the Discourse which followed, ere He once more left Jerusalem, is of the same character. It seems, as if Jesus could not part from the City in holy anger, but ever, and only, with tears. All the topics of the former Discourses. are now resumed and applied. They are not in any way softened or modified, but uttered in accents of loving sadness rather than of reproving monition. This connection with the past proves, that the Discourse was spoken immediately after, and in connection with, the events recorded in the previous chapters. At the same time, the tone adopted by Christ prepares us for His Peræan Ministry, which may be described as that of the last and fullest outgoing of His most intense pity. This, in contrast to what was exhibited by the rulers of Israel, and which would so soon bring terrible judgment on them. For, if such things were done in the green tree' of Israel's MessiahKing, what would the end be in the dry wood of Israel's commonwealth and institutions? It was in accordance with the character of the Discourse presently under consideration, that Jesus spake it, not, indeed, in Parables in the strict sense (for none such are recorded in the Fourth Gospel), but in an allegory' in the Parabolic form, hiding the higher truths from those who, having eyes, had not seen, but revealing them to such whose eyes had been opened. If the scenes of the last few days had made anything plain, it was the utter unfitness of the teachers of Israel for their professed work of feeding the flock of God. The Rabbinists also called their spiritual leaders feeders,' Parnasin characteristics of the Parables, see Book III. ch. xxiii. The word is not parable, but rapoμía, proverb or allegory. On the essential |