so long through so many bat-generations
that it has become blind, but it has remarkable ears, and nature has
grown for it an abnormal sense of touch, and a peculiar sensitiveness
even where there is no contact, so that it avoids obstacles in flying
with a skill that seems uncanny, incredulous.

I remember in Cincinnati one night, sitting on the platform of a public
meeting by the side of a widely known Christian worker and speaker who
was blind. As various men spoke he quietly made brief comments to me,--"
_He_ doesn't strike fire." And then, "_He_ doesn't touch them." And
then, "Ah! _he's_ got them; that's it; now they're burning." And it was
exactly so as he said. I sat fascinated as I watched the crowd and heard
his comments. The sense of discerning what was going on in another way
than by sight had been grown in him by the very necessity of his
blindness. Defect in one sense was overcome by nature, by increase in
another sense.

When Queen Victoria was in residence in Scotland at Balmoral it was her
kindly custom to present the various clergymen who preached in the
Castle chapel with a photograph marked with her autograph. When George
Matheson, the famous blind preacher, came she showed the fine thoughtful
tact for which she was famous. Clearly an autographed photograph would
not mean much in itself to a blind man. So the Queen had a miniature
bust-statue made and presented to him as her acknowledgment of his
service. And so where his eyes failed to let him see, his sense of touch
would carry to his mind and heart the fine features of the gracious
sovereign he was so glad to serve.

Jesus was God coming in such a way that we could know Him _by the feel_.
We had gone blind to His face. We couldn't read His signature plainly
autographed by His own hand on the blue above and the brown below. But
when Jesus came _men knew God by the feel_. They didn't understand
Jesus. But the sore hungry crowds reached out groping trembling fingers,
and they knew Him. They began to get acquainted with their gracious
Sovereign.

All this gives the simple clue to this word "_Word_" which John uses as
a new name for Jesus. Man had grown deaf to the music of God's voice,
blind to the beauty of His face, slow-hearted to the pleading of His
presence. His hand was touching us but we didn't feel it. So He came in
a new way, in a very homely close-up way and walked down our street into
our own doors that we might be caught by the beauty of