answer, and the silence to which they were reduced left Jesus Christ that right which a spotless and irreproachable life gives to the just man-that of being believed upon his word.

He resumes, therefore; and, availing himself of the advantage which their tacit avowal gave him, he said to them further: "If I say the truth, you believe me not?" He himself answers his question, and his answer is well calculated to make those tremble who have neither attention nor docility for the divine word: “He [saith he] that is of God heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not [children] of God."

The word of God is, therefore, well received by those only who listen to it with that tender and respectful attention with which virtuous children always hear the words of their father. How could they bear with this word-they whose father was the capital enemy of God? Wherefore they rejected it with disgust; for they could not oppose it with any reason. He who announced it was the most irreproachable of all men, as they themselves had just admitted by their silence. His doctrine was all-pure and all-holy, and it was proved by numberless miracles, to which no rational mind could raise any objection. What, therefore, could they oppose to it but outrage, the only resource of obstinacy driven to its last hold, and the most energetic avowal of the extremity to which reason has reduced it? "They, therefore, answered him: Do we not say well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil? Jesus answered: I have not a devil (4), but I honor my Father; and you, you have dishonored me. But I, I seek not my own glory; there is one that seeketh and judgeth."

After this grave and modest reply, the Lamb of God, so cruelly outraged, condescended, moreover, to announce to this furious peo

(4) Jesus Christ formally denies the charge of being a demoniac. As to the reproach of his being a Samaritan, we may say that he replies and does not reply to it. This term was both the name of a people and the name of a sect. He seems to meet in his reply the reproach attached to it as a sectarian designation, saying: I honor my Father, which the Samaritans did not do. Inasmuch as the term was the name of a people, he could not consider it a reproach-he who was shortly to unite all people under the same law, and make but one people of Jew, Samaritan, and Gentile. Besides, generally speaking, the ground of just reproaches is not the nation, but the morals; and in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh justice is acceptable to him.—(Acts, x. 35.)

ple truths more agreeable than those which they had before forced him to speak to them. One of these was to make them feel the infinite difference which there was between him and the arch-murderer, by whom they accused him of being possessed. He declared it to them in these terms: "Amen, amen, I say to you, if keep my word, he shall not see death forever (5)."

any man

When hearts are once perverted, they turn every thing into poison. This magnificent promise only irritated them the more; and, because they did not comprehend its mysterious meaning, they treated it as absurd or blasphemous. "Now we know [say they] that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest: If any man keep my word, he shall not taste death forever. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead: whom dost thou make thyself?"

He is about to make himself what he really is-that is to say, the Eternal One. But he first recalls to their minds the proofs of his mission; and, repeating what he had said upon another occasion, that, if he bore testimony to himself, his testimony would not be legitimate, but that there was another who bore testimony unto him, "he answered [still in the same sense]: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say, that he is your God. And you have not known him (6), but I know him; and if I say that I know him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know him, and do keep his word."

(5) He shall be preserved from eternal death. This is the common interpretation. Thus these words, He shall not see death forever, signify: He shall receive, by the resurrection, a life which shall never again be followed by death. Other interpreters understand the expression as referring to the life of grace-that life, eternal in its nature, as we have said elsewhere, and which can never be lost except through the fault of him who has received it. If we add, that it is this life which confers the right to that immortal life which shall come after the resurrection, we have both explanations condensed

into one.

(6) They had a speculative knowledge of God; but they did not know him, or rather they denied him in practice. For, not to execute his will is denying his authority and his rights, and taking part with those who profess that they know God, but in their works they deny him (Titus, i. 16). There was, therefore, one sense in which they could not say with truth that they knew God; furthermore, it is in this sense that Saint John hath said (1 Ep. ii. 4): He who saith that he knoweth him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

Then, returning to Abraham, whom they regarded as the first of human beings, he declares in these words his infinite superiority over him: "Abraham, your father, rejoiced that he might see my day; he saw it (7), and was glad. The Jews said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham (8)? Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am." They caught a glimpse through these few words of the equality with God which Jesus Christ attributed to himself; and, as if he had blasphemed, "they took up stones, therefore, to cast at him; but Jesus hid himself (9), and went out of the temple."

Although his words then produced such strange effects, we ought not to be surprised that he should have uttered them. Thenceforth they were not useless to all, since we have already seen that several believed in him; but, moreover, Jesus knew that what he said would subsequently be written, and that these same expressions, which excited against him the fury of his fellow-citizens, should one day insure to him the homage of all nations.

But if obstinate minds never find it difficult to elude the force of truth, and to resist all arguments, there are yet proofs so certain and so palpable, that we must either yield to them, or acknowledge that we do not wish to be convinced. It seems that Jesus Christ, before quitting Jerusalem, wished to give its inhabitants a proof of this. Here is the recital thereof, or rather the picture, drawn in such natural and lively colors, that we have not sought to add any thing to it, being persuaded that any thing which might be added, for the purpose of shedding light upon it, would only mar its beauty.

(7) Whether during his life, by a prophetic light which made him acquainted, by anticipation, with the mystery of the incarnation; or whether in Limbo, by the revelation thereof made at the moment when the word became incarnate.

(8) Jesus Christ, according to the common opinion, had not yet completed his thirtieth year. Those who prolong the farthest the years of his mortal life agree that he had not completed forty years. We do not know for certain the reason which made the Jews speak as if he had approached his fiftieth year.

(9) He rendered himself invisible, or else he mingled in the crowd in such a way as not to be perceptible to these infuriated men.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE MAN BORN BLIND.-JESUS IS THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

(a) "JESUS passing by, saw a man who was blind from his birth; and his disciples asked him: Rabbi, who hath sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind (1)? Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents (2); but that the works of God should

(a) St. John, ix. 1–41.

(1) Temporal evils may be the punishment of the sins of parents. I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation (Exodus, xx. 5). Wherefore, it is not surprising that the disciples should inquire whether the blindness inherent in this man from his mother's womb, was not a punishment entailed upon him by the sins of his parents; but we are ignorant of what was passing in their minds when they inquired whether his own sins were not the cause of his blindness. Did they believe in the pre-existence of souls, and could this platonic notion have been conveyed to the Jews of Judea by those who were called hellenists-that is to say, who resided among the Greeks ? Or else did they think that God punished by anticipation the sins which he foresaw would be committed at a subsequent period? Or finally, could their question have had the following meaning which several interpreters attach to it, viz. this individual not having deserved his blindness by any personal sin, inasmuch as no man sins before he is born, is it then the sin of his parents which is the cause of his blindness? We may choose for ourselves amongst these several conjectures which divide the learned. Two things are certain: one, that the disciples did not attribute to original sin the disgrace of this poor man; could they think that all men should be born blind, or deprived of some of their senses? The other certainty is, that they were persuaded there was no affliction in this life which was not the punishment of some sin; in which latter case they were deceived, as we see by

the answer of the Saviour.

(2) They had sinned, the blind man, his father, and his mother; but none of their sins was the cause of this blindness. This is the signification of the Saviour's answer, whence it manifestly follows that all the pains of this life are not caused by sin, and that there are some afflictions which are not punishments. Such were those of the Mother of God -that Mother who was conceived without sin, and preserved from all actual sin without exception, and who, nevertheless, was transpierced with a sword of sorrow. Nor need we cite so great an example; for the pains of baptized children before they could have committed any sin, are also an illustration of this truth. These pains are, indeed, the consequences of original sin; but they are not its chastisement: they do not punish it, and they punish nothing in them, because there is no longer any thing to punish in them;

be made manifest in him (3). I must work the works of him that sent me (4) whilst it is day: the night cometh when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had said these things, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and spread the clay upon his eyes (5), and said to him: Go, wash in the pool of Siloë (which is interpreted, Sent) (6). The blind man went, therefore, and washed, and he

for there is no longer any matter requiring punishment, if there be nothing more to be expiated. Now, it is the common belief of the Church, that, in little children who die after baptism, there is no further impediment to retard their entry into heaven. Thus the Council of Trent has expressed itself: wherefore, it teaches that there is in them no stain of sin to be wiped away. Whence it further ensues that, supposing there was not any original sin, these pains might still exist, inasmuch as we find them endured by those to whom this sin is entirely remitted, both as to the fault and the penalty thereof.

(3) Jesus Christ informs us that, independent of sin, the manifestation of the works of God is one of the causes of the evils of this life. The trial of the just is another cause of them: Because you were agreeable to God, said the angel to Tobias, it was necessary that you should be proved by temptation; that is to say, by affliction. We cannot see to what end the sufferings of little children may tend. But to whom have all the divine secrets been revealed? Who knows whether God doth not thereupon account with them; and whether, by a purely gratuitous mercy, he doth not glorify those most in whom he finds, more than in others, the image of the sufferings of his beloved Son? This conjecture is not entirely without foundation. The Church seems to recognize in the children massacred for the cause of religion, a sanctity superior to that of other children; yet the will of the first has no more part in their martyrdom, than the will of the second has in their sufferings.

(4) Jesus Christ has never ceased to act. He only speaks here of those works which he had to perform during his visible sojourn here on earth. The subsequent words: The night cometh when no man can work, comprise a general maxim which is more for us than for him. What he adds, that he is the light of the world, refers to the action that he is going to perform; and this action, which is the re-establishment of corporal sight, is the figure of the spiritual light wherewith he is come to enlighten souls.

(5) It would seem that this was more calculated to deprive of sight, than to restore it. Jesus Christ wished to show that all means are equal to him, and that none was necessary to him. Spittle is employed to make known the wondrous properties of his adorable body. By mixing it with the earth, he discovers to us the hand of the Creator, who, after having formed man from the slime of the earth, makes the same matter which had served for the composition of his work, subservient to its cure. He sends the blind man to the bath of Siloë, to test his faith and his obedience. Both one and the other appeared with admirable lustre; for he did not reason as Naaman had done, when the prophet Eliseus sent him to bathe in the Jordan. He received the order, and executed it forthwith, without advancing a single word of opposition.

(6) In the application of clay to the eyes, Saint Augustine recognizes the unction of the catechumens; and in the bath, baptism and its miraculous effects. All here is mys