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 a ll 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:51 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?'52 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
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experience; faith not superseded by experience, but made reasonab le by it.
51. St. John ix. 35.
52. With all respect for such authority as that of Professors Westcott and Hort ('The N.T.'
p. 212), I cannot accept the proposed 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 be strongly in favour of the reading 'Son of God.'
To such a soul it needed only the directing Word of Christ. 'And Who is He, Lord, that I
may believe on Him?'53 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.54 And so it was, that the first time he saw his
Deliverer, it was to worship Him. It was the highest stage ye t 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!55 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.'
53. St. John ix. 36.
54. προσεκυνησεν . 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 of Revelation, but always in the sense of worship.
55. ver. 39.
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