John 9:13-16

SABBATICAL FANATICISM

John 9:13-16. “ They lead him to the Pharisees, who was at one time blind. And it was the Sabbath, on which day Jesus made the mortar and opened his eyes. Then again the Pharisees asked him how he looked up. And he said to them, He placed the mortar on my eyes, and I washed, and see. Then certain ones of the Pharisees continued to say, This man is not with God, because He does not keep the Sabbath. Others said, How is a man who is a sinner able to perform such miracles? And there was a division among them. Then they again speak to the blind man, What do you say concerning Him, because He opened thine eyes? And he said, That He is a prophet.” Here we see the silly and disgusting fanaticism of the fallen Jewish Church on the Sabbath question, actually running it in, to nonsense by their rigid adherence to the mere outward form. I meet a similar fanaticism in my travels, and much like these Jews, because they require you to keep the old Jewish Sabbath, and so magnify it out of all legitimate proportions that you may be a vile sinner, ignorant of God, and at the same time they are ready to hail you as a paragon saint if you agree with them on their Sabbath dogma. It is really the same old, silly, crazy fanaticism over which they persecuted Jesus all His life, and hounded Him to the cross. “ Then the Jews did not believe concerning him that he was blind, and looked up until they called the parents of him looking up, and asked them, saying, Is this your son, whom you say that he was born blind? How then does he now see? Then his parents responded and said, We know that he is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees, we know not; and who has opened his eyes, we know not. Ask him, he is of age; he shall speak for himself.”