Excerpt from The Gospel of St. John, Vol. 2 These chapters (ix. and x.) bring the conflict with the Jews to a climax before the commencement of the Peraean ministry. They are doubtless closely connected with what has preceded; but the note of time (ch. x. 22) implies an interval of some months of intense activity elsewhere - to have carried on the ministry of Christ from the Feast of Tabernacles to the winter. If ch. x. 22 points back, as Westcott argues by alteration of the Received Text and by special translation, to the preceding discourse, we are compelled to dissociate the cure of the blind man from the teaching of ch. viii., and to regard the opening verse of ch. ix. as entirely distinct from, and discontinuous with, the stormy scene in the temple. Dr. Eustace Conder, 'Outlines of the Life of Christ, ' considers the connection so close between the eighth, ninth, and tenth chapters, as to bring the entire series of instructions into one group, and to intercalate a considerable portion of the later Galilaean ministry and also that in Peraea between the seventh and eighth chapters. On that hypothesis, after the break-up of the Sanhedrin on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles (ch. vii. 52), an absence of some months intervened before Jesus (ch. viii. 12) again spoke to them, and said, "I am tho Light of the world," deriving his illustration from "the Feast of Lights," which accompanied the enkainia of ch. x. 22. The removal of the closing words of ch. viii. 59 from the text as a gloss, favours a pause between the attempt to stone Jesus and the miracle. Admitting the spuriousness of the gloss, the connection between the chapters is not close enough to allow the supposition that, on the passing out of the temple with his disciples, the conversation and miracle took place. Godet thinks that the most probable time was the evening of the memorable day when our Lord and his disciples had returned to the temple. True, in Acts iii. 2 a congenital cripple sat at the gate of the temple, asking alms; but in this place there is no mention of the temple. Our Lord may have "seen" this beggar on any one of his peregrinations over the slopes of Olivet or on the road to Bethany, and now he seems to be in the company of the disciples, and with them alone. They are not apparently suffering from the recent excitement of the angry contest in the temple-court. They have had time to recover themselves, and to draw from Christ, not as tho eternal I am, but as their "Rabbi," a solution of a most pressing psychological and theological puzzle which has agitated all schools of thought. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."