This is part of the meaning of the little five-lettered word in his own tongue that John chooses and uses, at the first here, as a new name for Him who was commonly called Jesus.  It was because of our ears that he used the new word.  If he had said “Jesus” at once, they would have said “Oh! yes, we know about Him.”  And at once their ears would have gone shut to the thing that John is saying.

For they didn’t know.  And we don’t.  We know words.  The thing, the real thing, we know so little.  So John uses a new word at the first, and so floods in new light.  And then we come to see whom he is talking about.  It’s a bit of the diplomacy of God so as to get in through dulled ears and truth-hardened minds down in to the heart.

Nature always seems eager to meet a defect.  It seems to hurry eagerly forward to overcome defects and difficulties.  The blind man has more acute hearing and a more delicate sense of feel.  The deaf man’s eyes grow quicker to watch faces and movements and so learn what his ears fail to tell him.  The lame man leans more on other muscles, and they answer with greater strength to meet the defect of the weaker muscles.

The bat has shunned the light so long through so many bat-generations that it has become blind, but it has remarkable ears, and nature has grown for it an abnormal sense of touch, and a peculiar sensitiveness even where there is no contact, so that it avoids obstacles in flying with a skill that seems uncanny, incredulous.

I remember in Cincinnati one night, sitting on the platform of a public meeting by the side of a widely known Christian worker and speaker who was blind.  As various men spoke he quietly made brief comments to me,—­” He doesn’t strike fire.”  And then, “He doesn’t touch them.”  And then, “Ah! he’s got them; that’s it; now they’re burning.”  And it was exactly so as he said.  I sat fascinated as I watched the crowd and heard his comments.  The sense of discerning what was going on in another way than by sight had been grown in him by the very necessity of his blindness.  Defect in one sense was overcome by nature, by increase in another sense.

When Queen Victoria was in residence in Scotland at Balmoral it was her kindly custom to present the various clergymen who preached in the Castle chapel with a photograph marked with her autograph.  When George Matheson, the famous blind preacher, came she showed the fine thoughtful tact for which she was famous.  Clearly an autographed photograph would not mean much in itself to a blind man.  So the Queen had a miniature bust-statue made and presented to him as her acknowledgment of his service.  And so where his eyes failed to let him see, his sense of touch would carry to his mind and heart the fine features of the gracious sovereign he was so glad to serve.

Jesus was God coming in such a way that we could know Him by the feel.  We had gone blind to His face.  We couldn’t read His signature plainly autographed by His own hand on the blue above and the brown below.  But when Jesus came men knew God by the feel.  They didn’t understand Jesus.  But the sore hungry crowds reached out groping trembling fingers, and they knew Him.  They began to get acquainted with their gracious Sovereign.