it to the surface, immerse it as often as we please. And Christ
is as the wood cut by the prophet, that not only floats itself, but
brings to the surface the heaviest weight.

3. It is the mutual recognition of sheep and shepherd which decisively
exhibits the difference between the true shepherd and the robber. The
timid animals that start and flee at the sound of a stranger's voice
suffer their own shepherd to come among them and handle them. As the
ownership of a dog is easily determined by his conduct towards two
claimants, at one of whom he growls and round the other of whom he
joyously barks and jumps; so you can tell who is the shepherd and who is
the stranger by the different way in which a sheep behaves in the
presence of each. If a shepherd's claim were doubtful, it might be
settled either by his familiarity with its marks and ways, or by its
familiarity with him, its sufferance of his hand, its answer to his
voice. Christ stakes His claim on a similar mutual recognition. If the
soul does not respond to His call and follow Him, he will admit that His
claim is ill-founded. He may require to enter the fold, to rouse the
slumbering by a tap of His staff, to lift the sickly, to use a measure
of severity with the dull and slow; but ultimately and mainly He bases
His claim to be the true Leader and Lord of men simply on His power to
attract them to Him. If there is not that in Him which causes us to mark
Him off from all other persons, and makes us expect different things
from Him, and causes us to trust ourselves with Him, then He does not
expect that any other force will draw us to acknowledge Him.

The application of this to the attitude the blind man had assumed
towards the Pharisees and towards Jesus was sufficiently obvious. He had
disowned the Pharisees; he had acknowledged Jesus. It was plain
therefore that Jesus was the Shepherd, and it was also plain that the
Pharisees were not among Christ's sheep; they might be in the fold, but
as they did not recognise and follow Christ they showed that they did
not belong to His flock. And Christ trusts still to His own
attractiveness and fitness to our needs. It is very remarkable how
insufficient an account of their own conversion highly educated persons
can give. Professor Clifford's favourite pupil was, like himself, an
atheist; but racked by distress on account of Clifford's death, and
being obliged to pass through other circumstances fitted to disclose the
weakne