eciate
emancipation from it. They look for satisfaction so determinedly in an
anti-spiritual direction, that they are positively enraged at One who
certainly has power, but who steadfastly uses it for spiritual purposes.
Out of this condition they can be rescued by believing in Christ. Into
the mystery which surrounds the possibility that such a belief should be
cherished by any one in this condition, our Lord does not here enter.
That it is possible, He implies by blaming them for not believing.

It is, then, those who are unconscious of the bondage of sin who reject
Christ. One of the sayings with which He sifted His profoundly attached
followers from the mass is this: "If ye continue in My word, then are
ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free." The "word" of which Jesus here speaks is His whole
revelation, all He taught by word and action, by His own habitual
conduct and by His miracles. This it is which gives knowledge of the
truth. That is to say, all the truth which men require for living they
have in Christ. All knowledge of duty, and all that knowledge of our
spiritual relations, out of which we can draw perennial motive and
unfailing hope, we have in Him. The "truth" disclosed in Christ, and
which emancipates from sin, must not be too carefully defined. But while
leaving it in all its comprehensiveness, it must be noted that the truth
which especially emancipates from sin and gives us our place as children
in God's house, is the truth revealed in Christ's Sonship, the truth
that God, in love and forgiveness, claims us as His children. In its own
measure every truth we learn gives us a sense of liberty. The truth
emancipates from superstition, from timorous waiting upon the opinion of
authorities, from all that cramps mental movement and stunts mental
growth; but the freedom here in view is freedom from sin, and the truth
which brings that freedom is the truth about God our Father, and Jesus
Christ whom He has sent.

XX.

_SIGHT GIVEN TO THE BLIND._

"And as He passed by, He saw a man blind from his birth. And His
disciples asked Him, saying, Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his
parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did
this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be
made manifest in him. We must work the works of Him that sent Me,
while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work