not this the fast that I have chosen ?-To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free; and that ye break every yoke?'"

This is so much like what most ministers have said, that it seems as if there were a universal feeling originating in all minds the very same ideas, and that the press, like the pulpit, has grown prophetic. And of what does this give evidence? That all men are under a deep and solemn feeling that the judgment has been so far sanctified. I trust it will be sanctified yet more; and that while there will be the expression of a nation's gratitude, there will be at the same time the fast that God has chosen-the undoing the heavy burdens. For while one deplores that there should be any in distress, while the judgment is upon us, one will deplore yet more deeply that there should be any want of gratitude, of adoring gratitude, when the judgment passes away. I far more dread lest, after deliverance, we should bring forth no fragrant fruits of gratitude, than that during the judgment we should not pray to God for deliverance. I trust that the expression of public feeling and public sentiment which I have read will not be like the morning cloud and the early dew, but that it will last for many days to come. If these things do take place, I have great hopes for our country still. Every thing that I have seen about this judgment leads one to bless God, and to be thankful; while we lament the gaps it has made, we thank him for the moral impression it has left behind.

The result of this storm was, that the disciples asked, "What manner of man is this, that the winds and the sea obey him?" The result of this epidemic will be, that the people will think, "What God is this, whose finger appeared in the judgment, whose power and goodness have also, as acknowledged in the vehicles of public information, appeared in the repression of it?" Let us bless God for his

mercies; let us bless him for his judgments; let us praise him for the storm; let us praise him for the calm; let us see him in all things; let us see him teaching the minister in his pulpit, and whispering to the newspaper editor in his room; let us hear him in all; let us recognise him in all; and let us feel, as we never felt before, that religion-true, vital religion, is the only thing worth living for, as it is the only thing in which we can happily die.*

These remarks were made in the autumn of 1849, during the epidemic, the subduing, and sanctifying, and suggestive effects of which are now, alas, neither so deep nor so general as we once ventured to hope.

196

LECTURE XI.

BETHESDA AND ITS BLESSINGS.

After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked and on the same day was the sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath day it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk? And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.--JOHN v. 1-18.

:

AT what feast of the Jews this special miracle was wrought it is difficult to say; and it is not of very material moment that we should be able to determine. The

feast is called "a feast of the Jews," that is, it was peculiar to the Jews. The moment, however, that Jesus touched it by his presence, that moment it was gone; for he was the end of all types; he was the substance of all shadows: and just as the shades of night depart when the sun rises above the horizon, so the feasts and fasts and institutions of the Jews passed away the moment that the Sun of righteousness shone upon them.

Bethesda, literally translated, means the house of mercy. The place is still traditionally pointed out; and in most books upon Palestine, a certain pool or deep well is alluded to as the pool of Bethesda; but Robinson, an American writer, in his Biblical Researches, has shown, and it seems to me conclusively, that it is not the same; and that we do not know where it was. Nor does it much matter. The local is the circumstantial and the transient; the moral and the spiritual lessons of Bethesda endure now and for

ever.

The pool, it seems, was either miraculously impregnated with medicinal virtue after an angel had stirred it, or it was permanently endued with that virtue, so that every one that stepped into it after it had been stirred by the angel, was healed of whatever disease he had. It is perhaps a distinction without a difference whether it was permanently medicinal, or made temporarily and specially so; for the high and true view of nature is his, who sees in nature One above it, and beyond it, and superior to it. We speak of causes and effects; we say that such a medicinal virtue is the cause of such a cure; we say that such a substance is the cause of such an effect; whereas when we have so spoken, we have not discovered causes, but only, to use the language of philosophers, sequences of phenomena, when we parade what are called secondary and in each sequence is developed the power, the

causes;

presence, and the energy of Deity. A cause may be no more related to what is called its effect than one link in a chain may be the cause of the link that succeeds it: the one follows the other, but the one is not necessarily the cause of the other. And they are the true Christians and the right philosophers, who are not satisfied with tracing link after link, the one as depending on the other, till they find the whole chain fastened by its staple to the throne of God; and see God's energy and power transmitted along every link, and explain all effects by the fact that God is, and works, in them all.

It appears that at this pool, whether its virtues were permanently healing or only temporarily so, there were multitudes of the halt, the lame, and the impotent. It reminds one of our modern watering-places, as they are called. What are Cheltenham, Harrowgate, Leamington, but modern Bethesdas? What are the multitudes in the inns that are there but crowds of impotent folk, and blind, and maimed, and sick, waiting for the health which they have lost? And what is the medicinal virtue in these wells? The inspiration, the gift of the goodness of God

-as much so, as truly so, as if an angel had left the skies, descended into each, and had given them all their healing virtues.

In this crowd that surrounded the pool of Bethesda, and in the crowds that surround modern Bethesdas, if such I may venture to call them, we have a suggestive fact, which will not be forgotten at the judgment-day. Men who have lost the health of the body that is day by day approximating to the dust, will go to the ends of the earth, if peradventure they may obtain its recovery; but persons who know they have lost the health of their soul, and thereby the hopes of glory, are found few and far between, if we take the nation as a whole, crowding those true and