A man, who, through a very clever operation, was given his sight at the age of thirty years. Now, this was all the more wonderful, considering he had never known what sight was before, as he was, thirty years previously, born blind. One day, prior to the event narrated above, a friend sought to converse with him about the beautiful hills of that land.
“Hills?” he would say. “Yes, but what are hills?”
He received the answer:
“Why, where the land rises—goes up.”
“Goes up?” he says, “But what is ‘goes up?’”
He could not comprehend, for his world was one dead, black level; one vast, even plain of absolute darkness—that was how blind he was.
One day a tourist saw him, and hearing his story, took a great interest in him. He installed him in the Ophthalmic Institute of that city. He underwent a surgical operation, and then had his eyes bandaged up for many days. One day it was decided to remove the bandages, and lo! the man who had been blind all his life could see! No one can possibly realize his sensations at that moment, or for many months after. One can only form a vague idea, and really it is rather pathetic. A doctor and a nurse were bending over his bed. The once blind man was the first to speak.
“You’re the nurse,” he said to the latter. “I know you are a woman because your face is soft and smooth” —that is how he first saw things. And then his mother entered the ward. He watched her coming towards him, but did not recognize her until she spoke.
“Ah! mother,” he cried, “I can see you, and you are very, very beautiful to me.”
All was absolutely new, and everything was absolutely beautiful. They took him home in the train, and the sight of the fields, the houses, and the trees rushing past moved him by turns to laughter and tears. And then he reached the village and the home which he knew so well, and yet knew not at all. Friends flocked to greet him—old friends, dear friends, but he knew none of them until they spoke. The vastness of the land amazed him. He had no idea, he said, that the clouds were so far overhead, nor that the land stretched away on either hand for miles and miles. Then, too, running water was an amazing delight.
“Ah!” he cried, “it is very, very beautiful. Why don’t people make more fuss about it?”
Why, dear reader, do you think I have related to you the foregoing? Because it aptly illustrates the ecstatic joy and unbounded delight that fills the heart of the one whose spiritual eyes have been opened to behold the matchless beauty, the infinite perfection, and the unsullied glories of the Christ of God! O! wonderful, glorious blessing, to see Him, and to know Him as,
What a picture this dear man was, before he received his sight, of every unregenerate soul! Blind to their true state before God, blind too, to the love of God, and to the peerless Saviour who longs to open their eyes. This is how the Word of God designates such,
How lamentable indeed to contemplate such a state, and how can it possibly produce any happiness. But have you ever read the words that were addressed to the beloved Apostle Paul, who was chosen of God to go and declare a message of life and love to all in such condition? Then listen!
O! beloved reader, blind and dark indeed, you are still, if you are still in your sins. Does it not touch your very heart to learn of the unutterable love of Jesus, who, went down into the darkness of death, that you might be brought into the light of life? Who bore the storm of God’s righteous wrath, that you might know and enjoy the sweet calm of His blessed favor? Who sank in deep mire where there was no standing, that you might firmly and safely stand upon a rock? O that your heart might immediately respond to such vast and immeasurable love! Turn to Him in all your sins, in all your darkness, and in all your blindness, and He will assuredly give you to know the joy of what it means to have your sins forgiven through faith in His blood; turned from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God. Rest assured, your gladness will then excel that of the dear man of whom I have told you; and your chief delight will be to learn more and more of the one, who, at such an infinite cost to Himself brought you into such a wonderful place.
We read in the ninth of John of another dear man, born blind, but he was brought in contact with the peerless Son of God, who in tenderest grace and pity, opened his eyes; what an object met his gaze, as those eyelids were first unsealed; opened, to first of all behold the Christ of God, to contemplate His beauty!
And is not He the first to meet the gaze of every repentant sinner today? What a sight indeed! Can you, dear reader, say,
“I see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor”? (Heb. 2:99But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. (Hebrews 2:9)). Ah! if so, I know your great delight is to fall down before Him, in gratitude, praise and worship, and adore Him as the dearest object of your heart.
O! that you may know Him, and that His glorious beauty may fill your vision! Soon He will come to take to glory all His beloved ones, when perfect satisfaction will be the eternal portion of both His own heart, and those of every redeemed soul.