man's being sent to the
pool of Siloam lay in the circumstance that it was in John's eyes a
symbol of Christ Himself. He was sent by God. The people found it
difficult to believe this, because He had slowly and unostentatiously
grown up like any other man. "We know this Man, whence He is." "Is not
this the carpenter's Son?" "How sayest Thou, I came down from heaven?"
They could trace Him to His source. He did not appear fullgrown in their
midst, without home, without any who had watched over His boyhood and
growth. He was like the river whose sources were known, not like the
stream bursting in full volume from the rock. The people felt ashamed to
laud and celebrate as sent by God One who had grown up so quietly among
themselves, and whose whole demeanour was so unostentatious. So had
their fathers despised the waters of Siloam, "because they went softly;"
because there was no mighty stream and roar, but a quiet pool and a
little murmuring stream.

So might this blind man have reasoned when sent to Siloam: "Why, herein
is a marvellous thing that I am to be healed by what has been within my
reach since I was born, by the pool I used to dip my hand in when a boy,
and wonder what like was the coolness to the sight. What hidden virtue
can there be in that spring? Am I not exposing myself to the ridicule of
all Jerusalem?" But, as this blind man's conduct afterwards showed, he
was heedless of scorn and independent of other people's opinion, a
fearless and trenchant reasoner who stands alone in the Gospel history
for the firmness and sarcasm with which he resisted the bullying tone of
the Pharisees, and compelled them to face, even though they would not
acknowledge, the consequences of incontrovertible facts. This
characteristic contempt of contempt, and scorn of scorn served him well
now, for straight he went to the pool in the face of discouragements,
and had his reward.

And the Pharisees might, with their gift of interpreting trifles, have
deduced from this cure at the humble and noiseless Siloam some
suggestion that though Jesus did seem a powerless and common Man, and
though for thirty years His life had been flowing quietly on without
violently changing the established order of things, yet He might, like
this pool, be the Sent of God, to whom if a man came feeling his need of
light and expecting in Him to find it, there was a likelihood of his
blindness being taken away. This, however, as our Lord had afterwards
occa