the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his whole house.'

Here we have, no doubt, the account of a sign, and of its effect upon the persons toward whom it was exhibited St. John himself connects it with the sign in Cana of Galilee He appears to wish that we should regard both as specimens of Galilæan signs in distinction from Jerusalem signs. We may, therefore, apply here the principles which we discovered with reference to the marriage-feast. There it seemed that the lesson which was taught belonged to all marriage-feasts, to all the outward signs of life and joy,— to those mysterious powers by which, in any country or in any age, physical transformations are effected. In this one instance Jesus was revealed as giving the blessing which seals the marriage-vow, wherever it is made,-as everywhere the Inspirer of gladness,-as ruling all the energies of nature. The circumstances in the Capernaum story are much changed; it touches more nearly on the funeral than on the bridal. But in one, as much as in the other, Christ is revealed as the Word of Life. In one, as much as in the other, human relationships are beautified and hallowed by Christ; the relation of the husband there, of the father here. One, as much as the other, applies to England as well as to Galilee. And what was said there of the faith that followed the sign, is even more strikingly developed here. He manifested forth His glory, and His disciples' -those who had already confessed Him to be the Christ upon another ground-believed in Him.' It was a discovery to them of His inward power. It deepened a conviction that had been imparted to them already. The Capernaum nobleman had already believed in Christ, with the belief of one who wants help, and thinks he has found

The sign The man

the person who is able and willing to bestow it. unfolds that faith, and makes it more profound. becomes not more a seeker of marvels, but less. He desires no longer, casual, flitting exercises of power; he bows to power as inward, continual, moral. He is always in the presence of Him who spoke the word at the seventh hour. At every moment, he and his son and all his household are receiving fresh life from Him. To know Him, to be in fellowship with Him, to be doing His will-which 's the will of Him who sent Him: this he finds to be eternal life.

DISCOURSE XI.

THE POOL OF BETHESDA.

[Lincoln's Inn, 3d Sunday after Easter, April 13, 1856.]

ST. JOHN V. 16-18.

And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, 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 had not only broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making Himself equal with God.

THE scene changes again at the opening of this chapter. 'After these things there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.' What feast it was, the harmonists may settle; as St. John has not told us, I am content to dwell upon the fact, which he evidently thought of great importance, that Jesus did go up to the feasts, and that His acts had a special reference to the state of mind which He found among the inhabitants of the capital; above all, among its religious teachers.

Now there is at Jerusalem, by the sheep-market, a pool which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.' Jerusalem might or might not have been compassed with Roman armies when St. John wrote. I do not know that its independence or its capture would affect the position of the pool or the sheep-market; they might be

still just what they had been when the Apostle knew them. Perhaps the pool was no longer visited as in former days; perhaps the tradition of its virtues still drew to it people from the country round. At all events, the sight which had been before his eyes thirty or forty years before, was not one which he would forget. It is not one which we need much effort of imagination to bring before ourselves.

"In these' porches lay a multitude of sick folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the waters.' If we look at the separate figures in the picture, they belong as much to the West as to the East-to the nineteenth century as to the first. Nor can any frequenters of an English or German spa consider the motive which brought together so many of different ages and with different ailments, a strange or an obsolete one. Even the notion that at certain times the water would possess a virtue which at other times it would want, may be justified by modern experience, perhaps may be explained by modern science.

But experience and science, it will be said, are both set at nought by the announcement in the next verse: ' For an angel went down at a certain season, and troubled the water: whosoever, therefore, first after the troubling of the water stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.' Here a reason is given for the virtues of the pool;-not, it will be said, a medical reason; not one which can connect the waters of this pool with those which intelligent people frequent for qualities which are, on fair evidence, known or believed to be in them;-but rather one which connects them with the holy wells which in the villages of England, Wales, and Ireland, are supposed to have received a blessing from some local saint. To find St. John adopting or endorsing such legends, causes no pain to those who assume him and

his brother Apostles to be the propagators of superstition; ignorant Jews, who were steeped in all the prejudices of their countrymen, and who added to them some of their own invention. There are some who, with a general respect for him and them, can yet give him credit for following the traditions of his country when they were ever so vulgar and false; excusing him on the plea that he knew nothing of physics, and that his business was not with them. There are men of a better and nobler stamp, who, though they do not claim for him any acquaintance with natural science, yet are sure that he lived to scatter delusions, not to foster them; and that he would not have been permitted by the Spirit of truth to claim for lies the name of Him who came to bear witness of the truth. I do not wonder that some of these honest and earnest men should have been able to persuade themselves that the verse I have just quoted has nothing to do with the general narrative of the cure at Bethesda; but has crept into the text from the gloss of some writer who understood Jewish opinions, not the mind of St. John.

I respect the motives of these interpreters, but I think their conclusion is a rash and a wrong one. I am convinced that the words which they would omit are a vital part of the narrative, and that our Lord's act loses very much of its meaning if we overlook them. I am equally convinced that these words contradict no truth of science; that, if taken by themselves, they do not meddle with it, and are only supposed to meddle with it through a logical confusion, from which, for the sake of science and of our own intellectual clearness, it is well that we should be delivered; that, if taken in conjunction with the whole story, they help to scatter a superstition which was very