Blind Bartimeus; or, The story of a sightless sinner, and his great physician

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S LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I

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"And hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant, and they told him that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by."

LINDNESS, poverty, beggary ! What woes to be mingled in one cup ! Who can measure the wretchedness of the man who is ever drinking their still unexhausted bitterness ? Let us pity Bartimeus. But do not forget the deeper sorrows of which these were but the shadow. I see more miserable souls before me. I can weep over Bartimeus, but when I look at many of you, I am amazed that I ever cease to weep. What hardness has seized my heart that I can think of j^ou without tears, or meet you without lamentation ? The heavens are astonished at your wretchedness and doom, and why doth not horror take hold on my soul ?* Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a foun-

BLLNTD BARTIMEUS. 55

tain of tears, tliat I might weep day and night for you,1 0 ye blinder blind, and poorer poor than Bartimeus !

Ah ! if it were only the eye of the body that is out ! only the flesh that is clothed with rags ! Yet that would be dreadful. It was dreadful in visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men.2 Then I dreamed that Sabbath morning had come, and I stood in my pulpit to preach ; when suddenly I saw paleness gathering on all faces ; for God was wrapping jo^a. in His cloud and thick darkness, and I stood alone among a congregation of the blind. Then a change passed over your bright raiment, and it became rags — the coarse rags of beggars. All bloom fled from every cheek, and every form was shrivelled and bent. A horrible old age had come even on the faces of little children. Ah ! what a scene it was ! Some of you groped your fearful way in the dark. Some shrieked in frenzy. Some stretched your bony hands and turned your hunger-bitten faces toward heaven, and with eyes that wept their own blindness, cried in anguish for light ; while some sat still, petrified with, horror. Yet I knew you all as before. I looked down on the same dear faces, wretched now, and ghastly, the same gentle eyes through which loving souls had so often looked in kindness on me, — now distorted and wild, and " rolling in vain to find the day."

When grief and astonishment would let me, I tried to speak, but none heard me. I called aloud ; but screams and sobs and deep-drawn sighs, and curses muttered through gnashing teeth, drowned my voice. When ]o ! amid the great bitterness and struggle of my soul, I heard the voice of God saying unto me, " Weep not, nor be dismayed for this ; but weep for souls that see not, and hearts that are blind. Weep for the desolations of sin, of which I have now shown thee a little, lest I visit the people in mine anger, and there be no remedy ; lest I smite them in my wrath, and their blindness be everlasting. Weep for them."

The awful voice had made a great silence, and now again it spoke, and said to you, with a benignant sweetness which melted your hearts and poured sunbeams on your darkness, " 0 ye wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked ; I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that ye may be rich ; and white raiment that ye may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness do not appear; and anoint your eyes with eye-salve that ye may see I"1

Will you not weep for yourselves, ye blind souls ? Will j^ou not believe God's testimony declaring your ruin and proclaiming a remedy? Will you not taste and see that the Lord is gracious?2 Will you not follow on to know the Lord3 as He reveals His loving-kindness, in this story, in which human misery and divine mercy so strangely meet, and mercy so blessedly triumphs ? Consent to begin in the depths with Bartimeus, and one day you shall stand on the heights with him, praising his God and 3 ours with irrepressible rejoicing.

But, poor man ! his song is not yet. He

still sits by the high-way, as unconscious as

the dead, of the blessing which even now

slowly draws near, and soon shall pour around

1 Rev., iil 18. 2 Psalm xxxiv. 8. 3 Hosea, vl 3.

58 BLUNT} BARTIMEUS.

and through him its streams of earthly and heavenly light.

There he sits in his dreary darkness, while from the Throne an Eye of pity is looking down upon him, and from the gates of heaven loving angels are pouring forth,1 to behold a new triumph of the power and grace of their Lord,2 and welcome a new companion to their everlasting joy,3 and that Lord Himself is coming nearer, nearer, with his heart yearning for its gracious overflow. That celestial virtue, which dwelt in unmeasured fulness in Him and poured out so freely that, if faith's finger touched even the hem of His garment, its liberal streams emptied themselves till all human need was filled,4 — that virtue was even now springing up from the deep wells of His Deity and thrilling His human heart with secret joy.

And is it not always so? Does not God always begin with man ? What has man, except his miseries, to attract any thing in God ? And what can these attract but grace — pure

3 Luke, xv. 10. 4 Luke, viil 43-48.

grace coming in place of deserved wrath? And when even this comes, it finds no welcome or congenial home. " The grace of God in the heart of man," says Leigh ton, " is a tender plant in a strange, unkindly soil." Both the seed and the sunshine, then, must come from heaven. To him that hath, indeed, shall be given,1 but then what have we that we did not receive?2 Every good gift is from above.3 Have we repentance ? Him hath Grod exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.4 Pardon is no more the gift of Christ than the repentance that leads to it. Have we faith? It is the gift of God.5 Jesus is its Author as well as Finisher.6 Have we love? We love Him because He first loved us.7 Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, are all the fruit of the Spirit;8 while if you would see what fruit springs of itself from the vine of nature, you may read just before,9 where Paul counts over

i Luke, xix. 26. 2 1 Cor., iv. 1. 2 James, i. IT. 4 Acts. v. 31. 6 Epb., ii. 8. 6 Heb., xii. 2.

seventeen bitter, deadly clusters, and then, weary of the dreadful count, adds, " and such like." When God begins to deal- graciously with us, passing by us in pity, and looking on us in love, to make us His in everlasting espousals, we are described under, the image of a miserable infant, born in an accursed land and of accursed parents, and cast out immediately, unpitied, into the open field, exposed, helpless, bleeding, polluted, to die I1 And in many other Scriptures we are declared to be by nature, dead in trespasses and sins, lying in wickedness, children of wrath, having minds which are enmity against God, of our father the devil.2 And if the likeness, corruption and curse of hell are not ours for ever, the change from first to last is of God. " Men find a thing lovely, and love it; God loves a thing, and thereby makes it lovely."3

In this case, it is indeed brought to pass that the first word shall come from Bartimeus. But Christ, who is coming near on purpose to bless him, has, by His Providence, arranged

1 Ezek. xvi. 2 Eph., ii. 1 ; 1 John, v. 19 ; Eph., ii. 3 ;

"Rom., viii. 1 ; John, viii. 44. 3 Jenkyn on Jude.

it that he shall be sitting there as He is to pass by, that he should have some previous knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth and His power to heal, that his curiosity shall be awakened and his desires excited, while through His grace alone, he has faith to call Him Lord and trust his cure to His power and compassion.1

There he sits hoping for mere worldly gain. He has not come to meet Christ- It was not in all his thoughts to get his eyes opened.

How many like him are before me, — dying sinners on whom God's curse is resting, who yet did not come to secure the great salvation. You have gathered in the place of mercy, but not as fugitives from the wrath that is pursuing you. You knew that Christ was preached here in every sermon, but you did not come to meet Him. How many of this perishing multitude came for no higher reason than that others were coming, and you knew not well what else to be doing meantime, or you thought it decent to come, or you. like to hear sermons. For these and such reasons you have dared to seat yourselves in the house of God, and come under the tremendous responsibilities of hearers of the gospel! To stroll through sacred places, careless spectators of the crucifixion; indifferent lookers-on while God comes down in tempest and blackness on Mt. Sinai, to give His dreadful Law !

God grant a further parallel ; that you may get what j^ou did not come for, even a solemn meeting and saving closing of your souls with Jesus Christ

There sits the blind man, when a faint sound catches his quick ear. He listens, and perceives a noise of many foot-steps, a murmur of many voices, confused and distant. On they come, and hope rises high in his breast. To-day shall be a harvest to him. It is rare that so many pass at once, and now will he be diligent. On they come, and louder grows the sound of steps, the swell of voices. Wonder mingles with his hope, — wonder what all this means, for now they are near, and plainly it is a great multitude.

A multitude with Jesus ! a multitude of followers ! How can he then complain, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught ?* Simply because He had many followers, but few friends ; many from curiosity, many for loaves, many for fashion, but few from faith, few from love. And so it has been ever since.

A multitude with Jesus ! But it is not all following that blesses. Judas followed Him daily, but remained to the end the thief and devil he was from the beginning.2 Once the people not only followed but thronged Him ; but only one was healed, and she touched but the hem of His garment. They pressed npon Him, but hers was the only touch of faith.' Mere outward connection with. Christ did no man any good. And so it has been ever since.

A multitude with Jesus ! Yes, when His march is at all triumphal, — when as He goes He invests His progress with the splendor of miracles, there will be no want of a crowd to gape after Him. But though He fed as well as dazzled them yesterday, a little hard doctrine preached to-day thins them with a wit-

1 Isa., xlix. 4. 2 John, vi. TO; Mat, xxyi. 24 j xxvii 5. 8 Mark, v. 27, 31, 34.

ness. No man, said Jesus, can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him.1 And so it has been ever since.

A multitude with Jesus ! Take care, then, ye members of the church. Examine yourselves closely. Profession of religion is easy now. Numbers give power, respectability, fashion, even enthusiasm. See ! They spread their costly raiment in His path. They pave His way with purple. The thunder of their hosannahs goes up to heaven.2 But to-morrow He is alone, and the multitude grow hoarse with hooting and cursing Him.3 So little was the applause of the multitude worth ; so little did popularity test principle in the days of Jesus. And so it has been ever since.

A multitude with Jesus I Blessed be (rod, in that multitude some true disciples may be found; some who, though weak and sinning,— forward, like Peter, when they should be backward/ and then backward, of course, when they should be forward ;' ambitious, like Zebedee's children,2 or doubting like Thomas,3 are still true friends of Jesus, living for Him, suffering for Him, growing like Him day by day, and dying for Him without a murmur, if He so appoint. Always remember that. Jesus Christ has never been left without true followers. Among the professed people of God there have always been real people of God. So it was in the days of Christ. And so it has been ever since.

"And hearing the multitude." O what a blessing is that ! His ears are open though his eyes are shut. Thus God remembers to be gracious. Where He takes one mercy He leaves another. He never takes all until the cup of iniquity is full,4 and then wrath comes to the uttermost and shivers it.5 He leaves even the heathen without excuse, for they may know His eternal power and Godhead from the works of creation.6 And no sinner need flatter himself that because the Bible calls him blind or dead, he shall therefore

6* escape duty or condemnation. The same epistle which, pronounces sinners dead in trespasses and sins, shouts in their ears, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light!1

Yes sinners, you are blind ; you cannot see spiritual beauty or glory. But you can i hear' of them, and know that you must see them or perish.

"But / cannot open my eyes. So you have told me again and again. You say I am helpless."

You are indeed; but it remains nevertheless true that you must see or perish.

"Is not this a hard case? Is not such, preaching mockery? I cannot open my eyes."

True, true, and the more's the pity. It is a hard case. For the constitution of heaven will not be changed by your helplessness. Christ tells us that none are blessed but they who see God, and that only the pure in heart shall see Him.2 But your heart is foul with sin which God hates, and its foulness has blinded your eyes and brought you under His curse. So that you are, indeed, in helpless blindness. And j^et you must see or perish.

"But why preach this to me? If I am helpless why urge me with impossible duties and vain responsibilities?"

Because it is true that you are helpless, and true that j^ou must see or perish. Both are awful truths of God's word, and it greatly concerns you to know them. I see indeed that you would silence me by this logic. You think that in pleading jour inability, you have an argument that will excuse you from the duties you hate* Very well : suppose you do silence me. God will still call to you, Repent or perish, L Believe or be damned!2 And if you do excuse yourself from these hateful duties, do you know that you will also excuse yourself from salvation? You need not see, you need not believe. God will not compel your vision or your faith. But He will compel you to believe or be damned, to see or be lost. So all your logic has done for

1 Luke, xiii. 3, 5. 2 ^lark, xvi. 16.

you is to shut you out of heaven. But perhaps you do not believe that you are helpless. Then prove your power by opening your eyes. Try it. See, if you can. Look around on the regions of spiritual beauty. Delight yourself with the saints' blessedness. God's light and love are pouring all around you, and they will pour into you, if you can but open your eyes. . . . There, have you done it? Do they fill you with light? Bathe your soul with wonder and bliss? Ah! have you failed? Are you still blind? Is all dark? Is your heart still cold and hard? Alas, then you are helpless, and may never see ! Yet if you do not see you must perish !

" Ah, me ! what then shall I do ?" What ! are you indeed convinced that you have no power to open your eyes ? And yet that you must see or perish ?

"Yes, alas! I feel my utter helplessness, while the Law of God is urging me with its heavy requirements. I know I can have no heaven but in the vision of God reconciled, and smiling on me. 0 that would indeed be heaven ! But I do not, cannot see Him. I am blind, and can do nothing. 0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?"1

Now, sinner, you find the use of preaching your helplessness and your duty together. The merciless dilemma has met you at either hand, and shut you up to the faith of the gospel,2 You have learned to despair of your own strength, and cry out for a deliverer. Then you were in no haste to obey God, for what you could do at any time, why should you not choose your own time for? You would wait for a convenient season. But now that shield of vain confidence is cast away, and your naked heart bared to every arrow from the quiver of Grod. You lie helpless before a Sovereign God, justly condemned, and hopelessly lost, unless He save you. And now I may tell you what to do.

Do what Bartimeus did. Hear the truth, bear the truth, believe the truth. Settle it for ever in your heart that if you do not see your infinite need of a Saviour, and Christ's infinite fitness to be your Saviour, you are lost. Then cry to Jesus Christ to open your eyes. Salva-

i Rom., vii. 24. 2 GaL, iii. 23.

tion is by faith,1 and faith, is by hearing/ and you have hearing, you do hear — hear that you are blind, and the wrath of God is on you,8 and the vengeance of hell awaits you,4 and none but Jesus Christ can save you,6 and He can !6 You hear that, and I pray you make speedy use of it, or that will be taken away, with every other sense and power, and this death in sin will deepen into death in hell — death in blindness and despair for ever !

I have seen Laura Bridgman, whom God sent into this world without sight, hearing, or the power of speech. She could see nothing, hear nothing, ask nothing. To her the very thunder has ever been silence, and the sun blackness. The tips of her fingers and the palms of her hands have been her eyes and ears and tongue. Yet that poor sickly girl knows much of the earth and language and numbers ; of human relationships and passions ; of what is, has been, shall be; should be ; of sin and death and hell ; of God and Christ and Heaven. And all this has gone through the poor child's slender fingers, darkly feeling the fingers of another ; and thus she tells her hopes and fears and sorrows. And if she, groping so blindly for the Saviour, finds Him, and rests her weak hands on His lowly Head, — tKat blessed Head which bows lowly enough even for this, — 0 how will she rise up in judgment,1 and condemn, with utter overwhelming, you, oh, sinners, upon whose souls every sense is pouring the knowledge of God, while your eyes read His Holy Word, and your ears hear, a thousand times over, these tidings of great joy, — even the glorious gospel of the blessed Grod !*

" Hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant.'' So this inarticulate preaching of the passing multitude arrested the attention of the blind man, and awakened his curiosity, and set him to inquiring the meaning of these things. u Hearing, he asked." Yes, yes, that is the true progression. If there is a movement in the church, if a new impulse is given to the power of godliness, if Christ walks amidst His people,3 even though false professors gather with them ; if the tread of Zion on the earth is like the tread of an army with banners,1 then will a blind, ungodly world be arrested from its hungry, clamorous quest after mere earthly gain. It will consider and wonder and inquire. If the church, — if you, my brethren, will cease to wander or dance or drudge wherever the world does; if you will be awake and up, and gather nearer to Christ and thus nearer to each other ; if you will move onward with Christ, then men will look up. Old Avarice will drop his muck-rake, and Ambition forget to chase his bubble, and on the highway or byway, in court and camp and on 'change, men will pause and look ; and the movements of a spiritual church will make them wonder, and they will inquire, (while no little awe is creeping over their hearts,) What do these things mean? Where are these men going? Why do they seem like strangers and pilgrims, with their loins girded and their faces set toward some far-off country ?2 Why are they so earnest ? Why do they seem to walk above above the world,1 while yet they scatter ten thousand sweet charities as they pass ? What means their strange speech like an unearthly harmony ? Why do they sing in the way, brave songs of glory, even when the cloud wraps them, and the driving storm beats them with its hail ?

If Zion thus moved on with her King in the midst of her,3 how would the thunder of her triumph shake the earth ! Ah, brethren, if you, just you, thus moved on under the Captain of jour salvation, how would this city be stirred ! Your life would then be preaching all over the town, — in every street and lane, and it would be preaching which would crowd this house continually with anxious inquirers. In my heart I believe it ; every seat and standing-place would be filled, and the place be speedily too strait for us,4 and that cheering cry be heard again among us, Let us rise up and build.* Then would these courts be still and awful. Believers would find it hard to be absent. Pious affections, deep

1 Prov., xv. 24. 2 Ps. cxxxviii. 5. 3 Zech., iii. 15, IT* * Isa.. xlix. 20. 5 Neh., ii. 18.

adorations, importunate desires would fill their hearts and go up to heaven. With what power would they sing! With what fervor would they pray I With what holy relish would they eat the simple food of the gospel ! And how would the unpardoned hang with painful anxiety on the words of life ! How simple and easy would preaching then be, — yet savoring so preciously of life everlasting through Christ crucified.

Shall I describe a sermon which would refresh the people of God, and be as arrows in the hearts of His enemies,1 till they became willing captives of Christ V

My text shall be my guide. The road-side was the church, the multitude preached, and Bartimeus was the hearer. And now for the sermon ; — "And they told him, Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." u Jesus of Nazareth passeth by !" That is the whole of it, and I think it a very good one, when we consider the occasion. At any rate it enchained the whole mind and heart of Bartimeus. It went down into his soul like a beam of light, and filled him with 1 Psalm xlv. 5. 2 Psalm ex. 3.

amazement and joy. It was the strangest, gladdest word he had ever heard. ' Jesus of Nazareth — the Saviour — He who openeth the eyes of the blind ! Is He here — so near me — where I may speak to Him ? 0 has the day come at last, when my eyes shall be opened ? When I shall see, shall see, and be no more a beggar ? 0 can such news be true V

So you see it was a jpoiverful sermon. It went to the heart and took complete possession of it. I am quite sure Bartimeuswas not a captious critic of that sermon. He had no time to think whether it was uttered fast or slowly, loudly or gently. But what made it so powerful? "Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." That is all of it. I am afraid many of us would think very little of such a sermon. But Bartimeus felt his blindness and his need of Christ. There is the difference. The power of the sermon was in the state of the hearer's heart. A sermon often seems poor because we are cold. There is a difference in sermons, no doubt. But I read that men could go to sleep while Paul preached,1 and even the wise

1 Acts, xx. 9.

76 BLIOT) BARTIMEUS.

men of Athens called him a babbler and mocked,1 while the most noble Festus, who was a gentleman in high life, and should have known better, interrupted him in the midst of his sermon, and pronounced him " mad," 2— crazy, as we would say. If sinners and saints felt their needs more, — if they oftener came from secret devotions, the simplest things we could say of Christ would be like bread to the hungry and cold waters to the thirsty soul.9

It was a very simple sermon. Who cannot preach it? " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." There is no follower of Jesus who cannot tell poor blind souls this. Yet this is the message which is to save the world. The Bible tells it over in a thousand forms. Fill your hearts with them, and go, tell the glad tidings to lost sinners every where. I thank God that the gospel is so simple that the whole multitude of Christ's followers can preach it.

And so must the preaching from the pulpit be simple. We must say many things that our hearers already know. A good preacher tries to make all truth simple. He is a bad

1 Acts, xvii. 18, 32. 2 Acts, xxvi. 24. 3 Prov., xxv. 25.

shepherd, say the old writers, who holds the hay too high for the sheep. According to Lord Bacon, little minds love to inflate plain things into marvels, while great minds love to reduce marvels to plain things.

" The very essence of truth," says Milton, "is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness are our own.''1 " Better the grammarian should reprehend," says Jenkyn, " than the people not understand. Pithy plainness is the beauty of preaching. What good doth a golden key that opens not?"2 An old lady once walked a great way to hear the celebrated Adam Clarke preach. She had heard he was "such a scholar," as indeed he was. But she was bitterly disappointed, "because," said she, " I understood every thing he said." And I knew a man who left the church one morning quite indignant, because the preacher had one thing in his sermon he knew before ! It was a little explanation meant for the children,— dear little things, — they are always coming on, and I love to see their bright little

1 Reformation in England. Book First.

2 Exposition upon Judo.

7* faces among the older people. We used to need and prize these simple explanations, and why shouldn't they haye them in their turn ? And this blessed thing is to be said of the gospel: Let it be made ever so simple, so that little children are drinking it in with grateful wonder, it still has depths and riches to satisfy the mind and heart of the mightiest philosopher, if only he has that highest attainment of wisdom, — a simple, child-like faith. Like the sun, it is mirrored at the same moment by the dew-drop and the ocean.

But best of all, this sermon was about Christ. He is mentioned alone. When Bartimeus asked " what it meant, " these preachers did not answer, " "We are passing by." Yet their movements arrested him ; he heard them. But when he asked what the multitude meant, they told him " Jesus of Nazareth passe th by." It is a happy thing when the church can say of all its great movements and excitements, " Jesus is passing by." This is a test of revivals; a test of all right Christian effort, — " Jesus passeth bj7." This is the test too of a good sermon. " The excellency of a sermon,"

says Flavel, " lies in the plainest discoveries and liveliest applications of Jesus Christ. "

They annoance that Jesus is near. "What blessed tidings to Bartimeus ! In this you all agree. It was a great thing for him to have his eyes opened. From these far-off ages your sympathies run back and mingle with his agitation of joy. To have the eyes opened — to see for the first time ! The rapture must be indescribable.