prayers are not only frequently granted, but spiritual gifts are often added to them. The Saviour of Mankind did not let this poor sufferer leave him with the fingle bleffing of hope, but granted him a beam of light to chear his benighted foul.

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51. And as he was now going down, "his fervants met him, and told him say"ing, Thy fon liveth.

52. Then inquired he of them the "hour when he began to amend. And they faid unto him, Yesterday, at the "seventh hour, the fever left him.

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53. So the father knew that it was at "the fame hour in the which Jefus faid " unto him, Thy fon liveth. And himself 'believed, and his whole house."

This was fo wonderful an event, that the father of the restored child immediately owned that the person who was able to perform fo great a miracle, could be no other than the Son of God. What a bleffing to himself and his whole family

did the fickness of his fon prove, as it early brought them to the knowledge of, and faith in, our blessed Saviour.

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54. This is again the second miracle "that Jefus did, when he was come out "of Judea into Galilee."

Nothing could be better calculated to prepare the minds of the people to receive the divine truths which our bleffed Saviour came to teach, than the performance of miracles, which could not fail to impress the highest respect for him, and to oblige them, in fpite of themselves, to regard him as one fent from God.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

A

ST. JOHN, CHAP. V.

FTER this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to

Jerufalem."

Those public feasts formed a confiderable part of the Jewish worship, and were observed with great folemnity. Our bleffed Lord's conftant and ready obedience to every ordinance of his father's law delivered by Mofes, fhould induce us to be equally attentive to his inftitutions; particularly to that most facred and heavenly feaft, which he appointed to be obferved by his difciples in the room of

the

the Jewish paffover, and which the oftener we approach, the greater will be our relish for the fpiritual food afforded us at our

Lord's table.

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2. Now there is at Jerufalem, by the fheep-market, a pool which is called, in the Hebrew tongue, Bethesda, having five porches.

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"3. In these lay a great multitude of "impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. "4. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in, was "made whole of whatsoever disease he "had."

How often this power of healing happened, Scripture has not informed us. A learned divine, (Poole, in his Annotations,) obferves, that we are not to fuppofe the angel appeared in any visible shape, but that the rolling and tumbling

of

of the water was a fure fign of its then and then only being medicinal: he also fuppofes that this water had not the power of healing, till a fhort time before the birth of our Saviour, and that it was a figure of his near approach.

To this may be referred the paffage in the prophecy of Zacharias, chap. xiii. ver. 1.: "In that day there fhall be a "fountain opened to the house of David, " and to the inhabitants of Jerufalem, for "fin and for uncleanness."

The virtues of this pool certainly bore a great resemblance to the divine efficacy of our Lord's gofpel, in that (contrary to the nature of common medicines, which though beneficial in one diforder may be fatal in another,) it cured all manner of diforders; but here the comparison must stop, as our bleffed Saviour removes all the variety of diseases of the soul produced by fin, not only at stated periods, but at all times when we with true faith and humility apply to him as our divine phyfician.