EMB XXXIV
READ IT AGAIN
By Professor E M Blaiklock MA D LITT
CHRIST AND THE CLAY
XXXIV.
CHRIST AND THE CLAY.
Please read John 9.
And in that same story, by using such a peculiar method for this cure, was the Lord making a concession to superstition?
No, not in the sense that He Himself was the victim of a superstition. He was gloriously free from all such mental malady. But it is, perhaps, possible that the blind man may have held the popular belief that the spittle of a good man possesses healing power. It was necesary to help his faith. The Lord's miracles were a type of all salvation. The act of grace availed only when faith, however weak, met it with response.
The blind beggar had little knowledge of God.
The tags of popular theology which he uses in his clever duel with the Pharisees are witness enough to that. Somehow faith must awaken in his soul if the miracle of healing is to take place. That is why the Lord steps on to his plane. He performs an act which rouses a spark of hope in the man's soul. Then He asks the man to do something with faith. The psychology is perfect. He who knew the soul of man knew how the blind man's mind would work. With hope fanning a fire of faith in his heart the blind man groped his way to the Pool of Siloam,
and came back seeing." Neither the clay
nor the water of the pool had healing powers, but both were the agents which gave him the faith which saved him.