Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

¹⁰ And what are “the two blind men by the way side,” but the two people to cure whom Jesus came? Let us show those two people in the Holy Scriptures. It is written in the Gospel, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also must I bring, that there may be one fold and One Shepherd.” Who then are the two people? One the people of the Jews, and the other of the Gentiles. “I am not sent,” He says, “but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” To whom did He say this?

To the disciples; when that woman of Canaan who confessed herself to be a dog, cried out that she might be found worthy of the crumbs from the master's table. And because she was found worthy, now were the two people to whom He had come made manifest: the Jewish people, to wit, of whom He said, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel;” and the people of the Gentiles, whose type this woman exhibited whom He had first rejected, saying, “It is not meet to cast the children's bread to the dogs;” and to whom when she said, “Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table;” He answered, “O woman, great is your faith, be it unto you even as you will.” For of this people also was that centurion of whom the same Lord says, “Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”

Because he had said, “I am not worthy that You should come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” So then the Lord even before His Passion and Glorification pointed out two people, the one to whom He had come because of the promises to the Fathers; and the other whom for His mercy's sake He did not reject; that it might be fulfilled which had been promised to Abraham, “In your seed shall all nations be blessed.” Wherefore also the Apostle after the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension, when He was despised by the Jews, went to the Gentiles.

Not that he was silent however towards the Churches which consisted of Jewish believers; “I was unknown,” he says, “by face unto the Churches of Judæa which were in Christ. But they heard only that he which persecuted us in times past, now preaches the faith which once he destroyed, and they glorified God in me.” So again Christ is called the “Corner Stone who made both one.” For a corner joins two walls which come from different sides together. And what was so different as the circumcision and uncircumcision, having one wall from Judæa, the other from the Gentiles?

But they are joined together by the corner stone. “For the stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner.” There is no corner in a building, except when two walls coming from different directions meet together, and are joined in a kind of unity. The “two blind men” then crying out unto the Lord were these two walls according to the figure.