d with
it the still greater boon of spending it as Christ wills?

But though the man had thus instinctively obeyed Jesus, he actually had
not had the curiosity to ask who He was. It is almost incredible that he
should have so immediately lost sight of the person to whom he was so
indebted. But so taken up is he with his new sensations, so occupied
with gathering up his mats, so beset by the congratulations and
inquiries of his comrades at the porch, that before he bethinks himself
Jesus is gone. Among those who do undoubtedly profit by Christ's work
there is a lamentable and culpable lack of interest in His person. It
does not seem to matter _from whom_ they have received these benefits so
long as they have them; they do not seem drawn to His person, ever
following to know more of Him and to enjoy His society, as the poor
demoniac would have done, who would gladly have left home and country,
and who cared not what line of life he might be thrown into or what
thrown out of, if only he might be with Christ. If one were to put the
case, that my prospects were eternally and in each particular changed by
the intervention of one whose love is itself infinite blessing, and if
it were asked what would be my feeling towards such a person, doubtless
I would say, He would have an unrivalled interest for me, and I should
be irresistibly drawn into the most intimate personal knowledge and
relations; but no--the melancholy truth is otherwise; the gift is
delighted in, the giver is suffered to be lost in the crowd. The
spectacle is presented of a vast number of persons made blessed through
the intervention of Christ, who are yet more concerned to exhibit their
own new life and acquirements, than to identify and keep hold of Him to
whom they owe all.

Although the healed man seems to have had little interest in Christ,
Christ kept His eye upon him. Finding him in the Temple, where he had
gone to give thanks for his recovery, or to see a place he had so long
been excluded from, or merely because it was a place of public resort,
our Lord addressed him in the emphatic words, "Sin no more, lest a
worse thing come upon thee." The natural inference from these words is
that his disease had been brought on by sin in early life--another
instance of the lifelong misery a man may incur by almost his earliest
responsible acts, of the difficulties and shame with which a lad or a
boy may unwittingly fill his life, but an instance also of the
willi