sion to tell them, was precisely what they could not submit to do.
They could not, in the presence of a wondering and scorning crowd, admit
that they needed light, nor could they condescend to seek for light from
so commonplace a source. And no doubt it was a very severe trial--it was
well-nigh impossible, that men in high esteem for religious knowledge,
and who had been accustomed to reckon themselves the protectors of the
faith, should own that they were in darkness, and should seek to be
instructed by a youth from the benighted district of Galilee. Even now,
when the dignity of Jesus is understood, many are prevented from giving
themselves cordially to the life He insists upon by mere pride. There
are men in such repute as leaders of opinion, and so accustomed to teach
rather than to learn, and to receive homage rather than to give it, that
scarcely any greater humiliation could be required of them, than to
publicly profess themselves followers of Christ. For ourselves even, who
might not seem to have much on which to pride ourselves, it is yet
sometimes difficult to believe that a mere application to Christ, a mere
sprinkling of this fountain, can change our inborn disposition, and make
us so different from our former selves, that close observers might well
doubt our identity, some saying, "This is he," others more cautiously
only venturing to assert, "He is like him."

Though very pleasant to contemplate, it is impossible adequately to
imagine the sensations of a man who for the first time _sees_ the world
in which he has for years been living blind. The sensation of light
itself, the new sense of room and distance, the expansion of the nature,
as if ushered into a new and ampler world, the glory of colour, of the
skies; of the sun, of the moon walking in brightness, the first
recognition of the "human face Divine," and the joy of watching the
unspoken speech of its ever-changing expression, the thrill of first
meeting parent, child, or friend eye to eye; the sublimity of the towers
of Jerusalem, the glittering Temple, the marble palaces, by the base of
which he had before dimly crept, feeling with his hand or tapping with
his stick. To a man who, by the opening of one sealed sense, was thus
ushered into so new a world, nothing can have seemed "too grand and
good" for him to expect. He was prepared to believe in the glory and
perfectness of God's world, and in Christ's power to bring him into
contact with that glory