Bethesda: A Remarkable Recovery
Near the Sheep-gate at Jerusalem was a pool which the Most High had endowed with a miraculous virtue. At certain intervals — the evangelist does not say how often, whether it was daily, or weekly, or once a-year, nor does he say how long the pool had possessed this virtue, but at certain intervals — “an angel went down and troubled the waters; and after the water began to be agitated, whosoever was the first to step in was cured of his disease, whatever it might be.” There was mercy in the miracle, and Bethesda was one of the blessings, as well as one of the wonders of the Holy City. But the boon was restricted. It corresponded to that limited economy under which u salvation was of the Jews,” and when there were few indeed that were saved. The opportunity was of rare recurrence — perhaps confined to the Passover and other sacred festivals — and the sufferers who could benefit were only a few, and these not always the most urgent cases. The paralysed, the lame, and the impotent were apt to be forestalled by sturdier patients, and the very persons whose case was the most deplorable were often unable to reach the pool till the virtue had vanished. In Bethesda God taught the Jews what He is daily teaching ourselves — that, in order to carry out His beneficent arrangements, human sympathy must second the Divine generosity. God sent the angel, and made Bethesda therapeutic; but unless the sound and the healthy assisted the halt and the powerless, Bethesda was troubled in vain. There is goodness enough in Creation and Providence to make all the men of England comfortable, contented, and happy; but unless the virtuous and well-conditioned put forth a helping hand, and assist their abject and ignorant neighbours, millions may perish on the brink of Bethesda. And there is life enough in the gospel, a vitalising virtue sufficient to heal all nations; and blessed be God! that gospel is a fountain whose angel is never absent — whose virtue never fails; but unless there be kind Christian hands to lift the lethargic dreamers who bestrew the brink, and to help forward the frail and tottering steps which can hardly find the way, a multitude of impotent folk, halt, and withered, may die amidst the means of salvation.
Round Bethesda five porticoes or piazzas had been erected, luost likely to shelter from the weather the waiting invalids. Tn one of these porticoes, as He
BETHESDA J A REMARKABLE RECOVERY. Ill
passed on a certain Sabbath, Jesus saw a poor patient lying. He was advanced in years, and it turned out that he had laboured under his malady to the full extent of an ordinary human life — no less than eight and thirty years. As there he lay on his mat, with his pain-worn features, he moved the pity of the Man of Mercies. In answer to Christ’s inquiry, “Wilt thou be made whole?” it appeared that it was from no want of anxiety or exertion on his own part that he continued a sufferer so long. He had tried it often; but he was too poor to pay for an attendant, and when the propitious moment arrived, before he could crawl to the verge, some sturdier expectant vaulted in and carried off the cure. Knowing the story to be true, Jesus eyed him with that mingled look of power and compassion which created faith wherever it alighted, and said, u Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” Never doubting, never remonstrating, asking no question, and interposing no difficulty, the man instantly arose, and rolling up the mat, laid it on his shoulder, and walked away. u What! carrying a burden on the Sabbath-day!” exclaimed the infuriated spectators; and to appease their outraged zeal, the poor man pleaded the command of his merciful Restorer. But fanaticism would not be content with such an apology. “Where is the man” — not, Where is the man who has so wonderfully cured you? but — “Where is the man who said unto thee, Take up thy bed and walk?” But Jesus was no longer there; and it was not till a later hour that the convalescent was able to point out his Benefactor. Jesus found him in the temple; and, whilst his heart was still soft with recent obligation, said, “Go, and sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee.” Feeling it needful to his own vindication, and hoping, perhaps, that the hostility of the Pharisees would be disarmed when they knew who had wrought the wonder, the man told them it was Jesus. “Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath-day.”
“An infirmity thirty and eight years!” How the soul of the sufferer would have sunk could any one have foretold, when his disease was only commencing, how long it was to last! Young man, you have sinned, and this evil has befallen you. And it will not soon go away. The physician is not yet born into the world who can cure you. You say, The pain is terrible to bear; but you must bear it eight and thirty years. The present generation will be gone, and your own head will be gray, before you know again what it is to have an hour of health and soundness. But this fearful foreknowledge was mercifully withheld, and scope was left for that happy instinct which is a relic of the innocent era in the history of our race, and closely connected with man’s
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instinct of immortality. The sufferer had room for hope. He felt it worth while to try the remedies. Morning by morning he could creep to Bethesda; and though so often tantalised and disappointed, he could trust that the next turn would be more propitious; and how could he tell but that this day was the set time for favour, and after being so often baulked and baffled, what if this were the blessed day which should end his misery, and send him back to his fellows a restored and joyful convalescent!
Better, however, than the most sanguine expectation of a cure, is the sanctified use of sickness. God lias different ways of making His children holy; but with many it is His plan to make them perfect through sufferings. Says Baxter, in his note on this passage, “How great a mercy was it to live thirty-eight years under God’s wholesome discipline! O my God, I thank Thee for the like discipline of fifty-eight years; how safe is this in comparison of full prosperity and pleasure.”* And in a similar spirit has it been sung by one who was an invalid as many years as this poor man was impotent: —
“Had but the prison walls been strong,
And firm without a flaw,
In darkness faith had dwelt too long,
And less of glory saw.
Quoted by Biuut, vol i., p. 96.
But now the everlasting hills
Through ev’ry chink appear,
And something of the joy she feels,
While yet a pi-is’ner here!
The shines of heaven rush sweetly in
At all the gaping flaws,
Visions of endless bless are seen,
And native air she draws.” *
To the praise of the glor y of His grace who perfects strength in weakness, be it known that there is no ailment so protracted, nor any paroxysm so overwhelming, but that even as the suffering abounds the consolation can also abound. As one expressed it, who was subject to manifold tribulations, “The promise, ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ has been so fulfilled that I could feel strength given my soul each moment to bear up against the exhaustion of my body.” f And another, who for thirty-seven years was u gold tried in the fire,” u I experience so .much of the Saviour’s love in supporting me under pain, that I cannot fear its increase.” j: And we often recall what was once told us by a sainted friend whose parish was the Grassmarket of Edinburgh — that when wearied and sickened with the scenes of depravity which he constantly encountered, before returning home for the day he often went to refresh his spirit in a garret where a poor woman was slowly
* Watts’ “Lyrics.”
+ “Memorials of Two Sisters,” p 220.
J “Harriet Stoneman,” p. 149.
dying of a cancer. But so much of Heaven had come down to that little chamber, that just as in the peace of God the sufferer triumphed over nature’s agony, so in sharing her wonderful happiness the man of God forgot the wickedness with which his soul had been vexed all day, as he also forgot the deplorable misery of the tenement in which this beatified spirit still lingered. Glad and glorious infirmity which secures the Saviour’s presence, and is sustained in the Saviour’s power!
When this poor man was restored, he went to the temple; and it was there that Jesus next found him. Perhaps it was long since he had been there before; and at all events it was a good sign that lie found his way thither so soon. Doubtless, he went in the fulness of his heart, as well as in the first use of his renovated members; and most likely he had taken his thank-offering with him.
Meanwhile, let those of us who are able to frequent the house of God not forget “the assembling of ourselves together.” Reader, the day must shortly arrive — to some perhaps it has arrived already — when you shall have worshipped your last in the great congregation. And when that Sabbath comes on which you can go thither no longer — when in their Sunday’s attire the rest of the household have quitted you, and the bells have fallen silent, and from some neighbouring sanctuary the organic swell or voice o psalms has announced the commencement of the worship, and you know that all the Christianity of the kingdom is now assembled for social prayer and praise — may you not wish that in days of vigour you had been a more attentive listener and a more earnest worshipper? May you not wish that so long as you had a sound and painless head you had thrown more fervour into the public prayer — and whilst your voice was firm and clear, that you had contributed a part more cordial and inspiring to the psalmody? May you not wish that when your faculties were fresh, and before the grasshopper grew burdensome, you had hearkened more alertly to the words of life, and taken home more personally and practically the truth as it is in Jesus? And amidst all the motives to strenuous devotion and earnest hearing, would it not be well to bear in mind such days of darkness, and now be laying up a good foundation against the time to come? Would it not be well in imagination to change places sometimes with the mournful prisoner whose pew is this day vacant, or with the joyful convalescent who regards it as the crowning mercy in his restoration that once more it is said, u Go into the house of the Lord?”
The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath, and as the great Legislator, and Governor of the Church, Jesus interpreted the law of the Sabbath. Under the old economy, the main stress had been laid on the negative or prophibitory side of the Sabbatic command: “Thou shalt do no manner of work: Thou shalt bear no burden on the Sabbath-day; “and with the stricter Jews, he was the best Sabbathobserver who not only abstained from his ordinary employments, but who maintained the largest amount of general inaction. But the Lord Jesus u fulfilled” the command. By not merely attending the synagogue, but by curing diseases, by caring for the comfort of those around him, by speaking words in season, by filling up the hours with profitable discourse and benevolent deeds — He shewed that the Sabbath was not intended to be a day of grim looks, sealed lips, and folded hands, but a day of “delight” — a day of active beneficence as well as cheerful devotion. He took from it that merely negative or prohibitory aspect with which Judaism had clothed it, and restored the Paradisaic institution in all its kindness of design and with its fulness of blessing. Sabbath-keeping, according to the Jews, consisted in doing nothing; according to Jesus, it consisted in “doing good.” And as it was on a Sabbath-day that He first encountered this poor invalid, on the great principle that mercy is the best form of sacrifice, the Lord Jesus healed him at once; and on the same principle He bade him fold up his couch and carry it home. A Pharisee would rather that he had lain a night without a bed, or that he had left it behind at the risk of having it stolen: just as that Pharisee would have thought it a duty to leave the sufferer in pain till the morrow. And whilst the very genius of the institution requires the suspension of secular employ, and whilst we are far from undervaluing the bodily repose and mental renovation which the Sabbath brings, we believe that the man spends his Sabbaths best, and best commemorates the Lord of the Christian Sabbath, who is busiest in doing good. Nor are there many better ways of filling up the hours which are not employed in worship, public or private, than with those works of mercy and ministrations to the sick and afflicted of which the Saviour set examples so significant. Not only is there the Bethesda — the hospital into whose focus disease and misery are collected — but there is many a solitary sufferer, many a bereaved or destitute family, to which, with the Bible in his hand and the love of the Saviour in his heart, the benevolent Christian might pay a friendly visit; and whilst his own spirit is quickened by all the influences of the hallowed season, and whilst theirs is solemnised by the events of Providence, not only may it be his happiness to introduce the Great Physician and the Mourner’s Friend, but over the remainder of the day will spread a softer light and an intenser sacredness. Not the less “the holy of the Lord and honourable” for being bestowed on labours of love: there is no day so delightful as the day that is useful; and no week is likely to pass so serenely as the week whose first day was doubly hallowed by devotion and beneficence.