Study Desk

"Go and wash in the pool of Siloam" --the name means `Sent.' So he went and washed his eyes, and returned able to see.

His neighbours, therefore, and the other people to whom he had been a familiar object because he was a beggar, began asking, "Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?"

"Yes it is," replied some of them. "No it is not," said others, "but he is like him." His own statement was, "I am the man."

So the Pharisees renewed their questioning as to how he had obtained his sight. "He put clay on my eyes," he replied, "and I washed, and now I can see."

The Jews, however, did not believe the statement concerning him--that he had been blind and had obtained his sight--until they called his parents and asked them,

but how it is that he can now see or who has opened his eyes we do not know. Ask him himself; he is of full age; he himself will give his own account of it."

That was why his parents said, "He is of full age: ask him himself."

"I have told you already," he replied, "and you did not listen to me. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also mean to be disciples of his?"

From the beginning of the world such a thing was never heard of as that any one should open the eyes of a man blind from his birth.

"I believe, Sir," he said. And he threw himself at His feet.

To him the porter opens the door, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by their names and leads them out.

When he has brought out his own sheep--all of them--he walks at the head of them; and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice.

"I am the Good Shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his very life for the sheep.

(It was the Mary who poured the perfume over the Lord and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.)

Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought He referred to the rest taken in ordinary sleep.

"Let us go also," Thomas, the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "that we may die with him."

On His arrival Jesus found that Lazarus had already been three days in the tomb.

Mary then, when she came to Jesus and saw Him, fell at His feet and exclaimed, "Master, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Seeing her weeping aloud, and the Jews in like manner weeping who had come with her, Jesus, curbing the strong emotion of His spirit,

Jesus, however, again restraining His strong feeling, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone had been laid against the mouth of it.