did come by simply believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. "I saw." Multitudes of those who are seeing and walking through the heavenly Jerusalem can testify the same. Then be assured by it, and be comforted by it; only keep believing, only keep trusting, only keep looking; especially let your faith take the humble form of obedience. Crook your knee, for example; bend the stiff sinew in the hough, and pray; go down beside your beds in your lodgings, and pray. You may be, just then, like the blind man washing— you may rise seeing. "We stoop so weak, we rise so full of power," and brightness and gladness. The Gospel, mixed with faith in them that hear it, is the power of God unto salvation.

"Go wash in Siloam." In the 7th verse, you notice, John found an idea in the very name of the pool. Interpreting it for Greek readers, he says, "Siloam, which is by interpretation, Sent." Now, "John was not writing a dictionary"; then, why did he take the trouble to explain this word? Just because there was a point of light there. Often when you seem to be going away from Jesus, you are just going to Him. That is to say, obey Him; go along this. track; be all that you would be, and do what you would do, as you think, were the light come; and though it seems to lead you further away into deeper darkness, you will come on Him very soon. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it, do it." The proof of the Gospel is the doing of it. He is the "Sender": "Go wash." He is also the "Sent"; He Himself is the Water, He Himself is the cleansing, He Himself is the healing. He sends you from Himself to Himself,

Himself at this point, to Himself at this other point. He is waiting to catch your blind footsteps all round about. If you are obeying His word, do not think that you will wander; you will have the Light of light, my dear friend, sooner than you think. Even to begin to obey His word, to bend and obey, to begin to mix faith with what you hear and read in the Gospel, that is the beginning of light, and you are not giving Him enough credit for it.

From the moment in which that blind man got his eyes "anointed" with clay, and turned from Jesus to go away and wash, from that moment the light was on the road. Every moment that he put off taking the first step he delayed his blessing; but from the moment he took his first clear step, and the next, and the next, obeying Christ's word, he was on the way to light, and to the greater light, the light that never was on sea or shore, "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." I pity every soul here to whom that light has never come. "I went and washed, and I received sight." We have managed to put in some thoughts there, and I trust not unprofitably; although my ideas are of the most obvious kind, yet they are God's ideas, and may they help us. went and washed"-that is my part, "and I came seeing." Do not stand up and tell me that there is no difference, that the Gospel makes no difference, that the Gospel is played out, that it has lost its power. "Tell that to the marines," but do not tell it to the blind man, or you will get your answer very sharply. You will hardly argue a man out of his eyes. I would like to set down Professor

"I

Huxley and that blind man, and listen to them in controversy. Might I be there to see! I can easily tell you who would win. "One thing I know, Professor," he would say, and he would be most deferential, and give the Professor all credit for his great learning and his brilliant, incisive style, &c.; but he would say, "One thing I know: whereas I was blind, now I see." Do you tell me that the Gospel has lost its power, and that it makes no difference whether you believe or not? "I went and I washed, and I came seeing." Look at him, he stoops as dark as possible-as dark as midnight. He washes, that clay comes off; he washes and stands up. Yonder I see him coming up the town. "O my God," he says, "what a city I have been living in what skies, what trees, what birds; look at that templewhat soaring towers, what flashing roofs! The faces, too, of my fellow-men! What a wonderful world it has been, and I never saw it till this moment!" And, shortly after, the great sight, the face of Jesus, and the faith of Jesus"Lord, I believe "—and he worshipped Him. My dear unsaved friend, I don't want to twit you, but I do assure you you are missing everything worth enjoying in the world that God has put you in. What a great picture it is—and not a picture only; it is crammed with realities, and you have never seen! Or, to change the figure, you are deaf, and have never heard. You remember how Wordsworth describes the deaf Dalesman away up yonder in the midst of all the Lake scenery. He describes the storm and the effects that it makes when the clouds are driven on the

sharp edge of the rocky cliffs, and the wind works the bosom

of the lake into a thousand thousand waves. says about the deaf man, as onlooker

And then he

"The agitated scene before his eye was silent as a picture,
And evermore were all things silent wheresoe'er he moved."

Till Jesus Christ's grace comes, you are living in the dark; you see nothing and hear nothing, you know nothing, you enjoy nothing; but when the light comes, "Old things are passed away, lo, all things are become new."

May God grant that for this morning's work the record may be written: "We went and washed, and returned seeing." For Christ's sake. Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, Printers, 3 & 5, Marylebone Lane, London, W..

"BY FAITH RAHAB THE HARLOT PERISHED NOT."

A Sermon

PREACHED IN REGENT SQUARE CHURCH,

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

Joshua ii.

THE story of Rahab. What are we to make of it? I notice that some commentators are nervous about coming near it ; and of course there has been any amount of discussion, pro and con, about Rahab's character before this incident and about the way in which she acted in the incident itself, especially in the fore part of it. Well, when you have read it all, and sit back and lift your head out of the books and take a broad look, does it not look a little Pharisaical that there should be such gingerliness in coming near to such a story? After all, remember what the whole world is in God's regard. What is it? The whole world, in God's regard, "lieth in the wicked one." Rahab was no more in the devil's bosom than Adam was after the fall, and if God has to come near to "the whole world," and if God is to carry on His precious and His eternal purpose, we should not start back in mock horror and put on a Pharisaic look Vol. III.-No. 24.