The Temple officers, who had been sent by the Sanhedrim to arrest Him, and bring Him before them, were so impressed by His words and manner of speaking, that they dared not touch Him, but chose rather to return to their masters, and own that never man spake like Him. The Pharisees answered sharply that they, too, were deceived, though none of the rulers or Pharisees had believed on Him; none but the common people, who were too ignorant to know the law. Nicodemus, who was His disciple, though secretly, now ventured to remonstrate, but met with a sharp and sneering reply. After which every man went home; and Nicodemus probably took care that Jesus should be warned of the plots of the Pharisees.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LAST AUTUMN.

FROM that time Jesus appears to have spent His nights out of Jerusalem, only venturing to appear there in the daytime, when His friends were about Him. On the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, about two miles from Jerusalem, was a small village, called Bethany. This low mountain was henceforth to be His favourite haunt, and this village His most frequent home. There lived in it a family of friends whom He loved dearly, with a marked and special friendship. They were people of some importance, and were well known in Jerusalem; and it was now probably that they often received Him into their house as their beloved guest.

Early on the first Sabbath day, after the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus came to the Temple, and sat down to teach in the treasury, which was a colonnade surrounding the court of women, the usual place for worship. Here, of course, most of the congregation could both see and hear Him; and especially those who paused to cast

in their gifts into the trumpet-shaped chests which stood against the wall. His teaching was interrupted by the questions and remarks of the Pharisees, who grew more and more malicious, until at length, after calling Him a Samaritan, and telling Him He had a devil, they madly gathered up the stones which were lying by to be used in repairing part of the building, and would have stoned Him to death in the courts of the Temple itself, had He not hid Himself from them, and passed by through their midst. No riot ensued, for now the feast was over the great mass of people were dispersed; and this probably gave them the courage to attack Him thus suddenly and openly.

But no danger to Himself could hinder Him from a work of mercy. As He was passing from the Temple His disciples called His attention to a blind man, who was, perhaps, begging at the gate by which they left the Temple.

From this gate, which was at the north-west of the Temple enclosure, there ran a causeway down into the Lower City, where the poorer classes, to whom the blind beggar belonged, had their shops and houses. The disciples asked Him which had sinned, the man or his parents, that he should be born blind. Jesus answered them this blindness was no effect of sin either in himself or his parents; and, repeating the words with which He had begun His sermon in the Temple-'I am the light of the world'-He anointed the poor man's eyes with

clay, and bade him go to wash in the pool of Siloam. Siloam lay south of the Temple mount, and many a joyous procession had gone down to it for water during the feast. The blind beggar had to make his way through the busiest streets of the Lower City, his eyes smeared with the clay. He must have been very well known in this poor neighbourhood, and when he came back from Siloam, with his sight restored, there was a great excitement. Some among them disputed whether he was the blind beggar or no. They gathered about him, asking how his eyes had been opened, and he told them frankly all he knew. This Jesus, who was spoken of as one of those impostors who deceived the people of Galilee by false miracles, was He who had restored sight to him, although he had been born blind.

The escape of Jesus from their sudden attack must have left the Pharisees in a state of irritated dissappointment; and their vexation was certainly not lessened when a throng of people from the Lower City brought to them a man upon whom such a wonderful miracle had been wrought at the very moment of His escape. They had been carefully fostering the opinion that Jesus was an impostor, and here was direct proof to the contrary. They could seize only upon the one point which might be made to bear an evil aspect-'This man is not of God, because He keepeth not the Sabbath-day.' But some of the Pharisees themselves objected to this, asking, 'How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?

There was a division amongst them. They even referred to the beggar, asking him what he said of the man who had opened his eyes. He is a prophet,' he answered, unhesitatingly.

Upon this they professed not to believe that the man had been blind, and they sent for his parents, both father and mother. They were timid people, poor, of course, in circumstances, and therefore the more afraid of being turned out of the synagogue, and so of losing their livelihood. They could not afford to be bold in behalf of their son. 'He is of age,' said the poor trembling parents; we know he is our son, and that he was born blind, but we do not know anything else. He shall speak for himself.' It may have been, it probably was, the first time the man's eyes had seen his father and mother; he knew their voices, but their faces he now looked upon with his new power of sight, marvelling, no doubt, at the strange world at once opened to him, and unable to read as we do the expression of those about us. The frowns of the Pharisees, the downcast timidity of his parents, the eager gaze of his old neighbours, were a strange language to him.

The Pharisees questioned and cross-questioned the poor beggar, but he was a man of shrewd common sense, and of great courage, perhaps the courage of ignorance. He maintained firmly, that one thing he did know, whereas he was blind, now he could see. The blue heavens above, the splendour of the Temple, the smoke rising