Chapter 9

  As He passed by, He saw a man who had been blind from his birth.

  So His disciples asked Him, 'Rabbi, who sinned--this man or his parents--that he was born blind?'

  'Neither he nor his parents sinned,' answered Jesus, 'but he was born blind in order that God's mercy might be openly shown in him.

  We must do the works of Him who sent me while there is daylight. Night is coming on, when no one can work.

  When I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.'

  After thus speaking, He spat on the ground, and then, kneading the dust and spittle into clay, He smeared the clay over the man's eyes and said to him,

  'Go and wash in the pool of Siloam' --the name means 'Sent.' So he went and washed his eyes, and returned able to see.

  His neighbours, therefore, and the other people to whom he had been a familiar object because he was a beggar, began asking, 'Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?'

  'Yes it is,' replied some of them. 'No it is not,' said others, 'but he is like him.' His own statement was, 'I am the man.'

  'How then were your eyes opened?' they asked.

  'He whose name is Jesus,' he answered, 'made clay and smeared my eyes with it, and then told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and obtained sight.'

  'Where is he?' they inquired, but the man did not know.

  They brought him to the Pharisees--the man who had been blind.

  Now the day on which Jesus made the clay and opened the man's eyes was the Sabbath.

  So the Pharisees renewed their questioning as to how he had obtained his sight. 'He put clay on my eyes,' he replied, 'and I washed, and now I can see.'

  This led some of the Pharisees to say, 'That man has not come from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.' 'How is it possible for a bad man to do such miracles?' argued others.

  And there was a division among them. So again they asked the once blind man, 'What is your account of him? --for he opened your eyes.' 'He is a Prophet,' he replied.

  The Jews, however, did not believe the statement concerning him--that he had been blind and had obtained his sight--until they called his parents and asked them,

  'Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How is it then that he can now see?'

  'We know,' replied the parents, 'that this is our son and that he was born blind;

  but how it is that he can now see or who has opened his eyes we do not know. Ask him himself; he is of full age; he himself will give his own account of it.'

  Such was their answer, because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already settled among themselves that if any one should acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, he should be excluded from the synagogue.

  That was why his parents said, 'He is of full age: ask him himself.'

  A second time therefore they called the man who had been blind, and said, 'Give God the praise: we know that that man is a sinner.'

  'Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know,' he replied; 'one thing I know--that I was once blind and that now I can see.'

  'What did he do to you?' they asked; 'how did he open your eyes?'

  'I have told you already,' he replied, 'and you did not listen to me. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also mean to be disciples of his?'

  Then they railed at him, and said, 'You are that man's disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.

  We know that God spoke to Moses; but as for this fellow we do not know where he comes from.'

  'Why, this is marvellous!' the man replied; 'you do not know where he comes from, and yet he has opened my eyes!

  We know that God does not listen to bad people, but that if any one is a God-fearing man and obeys Him, to him He listens.

  From the beginning of the world such a thing was never heard of as that any one should open the eyes of a man blind from his birth.

  Had that man not come from God, he could have done nothing.'

  'You,' they replied, 'were wholly begotten and born in sin, and do *you* teach *us*?' And they put him out of the synagogue.

  Jesus heard that they had done this. So having found him, He asked him, 'Do you believe in the Son of God?'

  'Who is He, Sir?' replied the man. 'Tell me, so that I may believe in Him.'

  'You have seen Him,' said Jesus; 'and not only so: He is now speaking to you.'

  'I believe, Sir,' he said. And he threw himself at His feet.

  'I came into this world,' said Jesus, 'to judge men, that those who do not see may see, and that those who do see may become blind.'

  These words were heard by those of the Pharisees who were present, and they asked Him, 'Are *we* also blind?'

  'If you were blind,' answered Jesus, 'you would have no sin; but as a matter of fact you boast that you see. So your sin remains!'