When the Lord Jesus saw the mother in her grief, he pitied her, and said, “Do not weep.”

He drew near, and touched the frame on which they were carrying the body, wrapped round and round with long strips of linen.  The bearers looked with wonder on this stranger, and set down the frame with its body, and stood still.  Standing beside the body, Jesus said: 

“Young man, I say to you, Rise up!”

And in a moment the young man sat up and began to speak.  Jesus gave him to his mother, who now saw that her son who had been dead, was alive again.

And Jesus went through all that part of Galilee, working miracles and preaching and teaching in all the villages, telling the people everywhere the good news of the kingdom of God.

The children loved to gather around him, and when his disciples would have driven them away he said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

[Illustration:  The children loved to gather around him]

One Sabbath day, as Jesus and his disciples were walking in Jerusalem, they met a blind man begging.  This man in all his life had never seen; for he had been born blind.  The disciples said to Jesus as they were passing him:  “Master, whose fault was it that this man was born blind?  Was it because he has sinned, or did his parents sin?”

For the Jews thought that when any evil came, it was caused by some one’s sin.  But Jesus said: 

“This man was born blind, not because of his parents’ sin, nor because of his own, but so that God might show his power in him.  We must do God’s work while it is day, for the night is coming when no man can work.  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

When Jesus had said this, he spat on the ground, and mixed up the spittle with earth, making a little lump of clay.  This clay Jesus spread on the eyes of the blind man; and then he said to him:  “Go wash in the pool of Siloam.”

The pool of Siloam was a large cistern, or, reservoir, on the southeast of Jerusalem, outside the wall, where the valley of Gihon and the valley of Kedron come together.  To go to this pool, the blind man, with two great blotches of mud on his face, must walk through the streets of the city, out of the gate, and into the valley.  He went, and felt his way down the steps into the pool of Siloam.  There he washed, and then at once his life-long blindness passed away, and he could see.

When the man came back to the part of the city where he lived, his neighbors could scarcely believe that he was the same man.  They said:  “Is not this the man who used to sit on the street begging?”

“This must be the same man,” said some; but others said:  “No, it is some one who looks like him.”

But the man said, “I am the very same man who was blind!”

“Why, how did this come to pass?” they asked.  “How were your eyes opened?”