The darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose
name was John.
The same came for a witness to bear
witness of the light that all men through
him might believe.
He was not the light, but was sent
to bear witness of the light.
That was the true light, whose light on
us every man that cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world
was made by him, and the world knew
him not.
He came unto his own, and his own
received him not.
But as many as received him, to them
gave he power to become the sons of
God, even to them that believe on his
name, which were born not of blood, nor
of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God.
And the word was made flesh, and dwelt
amongst us, and we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace.
May the Lord bless us as we have
read together his word.
It is hardly necessary for me to remind
you, because you have been taught over the
course of years, that the wonder of the
New Testament is surely expressed in the four
Gospels giving to us a slightly different description
of Jesus Christ.
One of the proofs to me that the
word of God is the word of God
is that thing.
You see, if it had just been conjured
up by man, if man had got together
and said, we're going to start a new
religion, we're going to tell men and women
about a person who we will claim is
the Christ, I say, that you would have
said to Mark, Mark, what are you going
to say about Jesus?
We'd better make sure we say exactly the
same thing.
And if Jesus preached the sermon, let's make
sure, John, that you and I say exactly
the same, that men and women might not
look and think, why, look, they can't even
remember what he said.
The proof to me that the word of
God is the word of God is that
God never stamps out a man's person.
And John remembered what Jesus said, and Matthew
remembered what Jesus said, and Mark recorded what
Jesus was said, and Luke wrote down what
others told him Jesus had said.
They all tell us a slightly different story.
We might get a complete vision of it.
I was in Singapore some little while ago,
and in the great gospel chapel in the
center of Singapore is quite near the Anglican
Cathedral.
And the first day I went down to
the gospel chapel, I stopped someone in the
street, and I thought, maybe they won't know
where it was, or how foolish I was.
So I said to him, tell me, where's
the Anglican Cathedral?
Do you know what he said?
He said, well, as a matter of fact,
it's in four rows.
Which entrance do you want?
And he gave me four rows.
Later on, when I saw it, I found
that it occupied a block.
And yet I rightly could have been told
that it was in such and such a
street.
Shall I say North Street, or East Street,
or West Street, or South Street?
All of them looking at the same building,
a person seeing it, telling us something different
about it, yet all giving us a true
and accurate gospel philosophy.
You know that Matthew looks at the Lord
Jesus as the King, and he starts his
gospel, Where is he that is born King
of the Jews?
And he finishes it, All power is given
unto me in heaven and earth.
He sees Jesus the King.
Mark sees Jesus not as the sovereign, but
as the servant.
Mark, as you know, is the only one
who tells us nothing of the ancestry of
Jesus.
How consistent that is.
If you employ someone, you don't look at
them and say, Who was your great-great
-great-great-great-great-granddad?
You say it in your work.
And so they tell us nothing of the
ancestry of Christ, when they show us Christ
the servant.
But Mark, who himself was such a failure
as a servant, Mark, who returned from the
missionary journey that he should have seen the
end of, such a failure as a servant,
he writes and tells us about the purpose.
So he tells us nothing about his ancestry.
He just shows us Christ working, and he
comes to the close of his gospel and
he says, Christ working with them, and confirming
the word with signs of it.
When Dr. Luke tells us about Jesus, he
looks at him and says, Ah, he's not
the sovereign, and he's not indeed the servant
alone.
He's the saviour.
And so he gives us the message the
angels brought.
Unto you is born this day in the
city of David a saviour.
And he comes to the end of his
gospel and he tells us that through him
it is preached the remission of sin.
When we come to the chapter that I'm
going to speak from this evening, and the
book that I'm going to speak from, it
is not Jesus Christ who is the sovereign.
It is not Jesus Christ who is the
servant.
It's not Jesus Christ who is the saviour.
But hallelujah, it's Jesus Christ the Son.
The Son of God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God, it opened.
And it finishes with Thomas falling on his
face, crying, My Lord, oh friend, I'm so
glad tonight that I can commence this series
of gospel services by reminding you that I
have not come to talk to you about
some man who was a great philanthropist, or
a great emancipator, or a great teacher, or
a great leader.
I've come to tell you about someone who
was a great God.
A great God.
As we look at the first chapter of
the Gospel of John, I'm going to suggest
that there are four things that stand out
so wonderfully for us.
For as we look at the first chapter
of John, first of all, we see Jesus
Christ introduced to us as a searcher.
For verse 9 says this, That was the
true light, that light was everyone that cometh
into the world.
He's introduced to us as the light, the
one who is searching, the light that shineth
in darkness.
Isn't it wonderful that I can look at
your faces tonight and say, Sir, I have
a Saviour who's searching for you.
I have a Saviour who's searching for you.
And in the darkness there is the light.
As I go down in the chapter, I
see he is not only a searcher, but
I remember the glorious words of verse 29,
as John the Baptist gazed at the Christ
and said, Behold the Lamb of God, who
beareth away the sin of the world.
For he is not only a searcher, but
hallelujah, he's a sacrifice.
The Lamb of God, beareth away the sin
of the world.
If all Jesus did was to come to
search for me, to show me that I
was in darkness, to find me in the
situation in which I'm found, if all he
did was that, then of all men I
would be most miserable.
I would rather be in darkness and not
know it than have a light to shine
upon me and just show me my lost
condition.
But thank God he didn't just come to
seek, he came to save.
He not only came to be a light,
he came to be a Lamb.
Not only came that he might search for
you and me, but that he might bear
away.
Would you mind me stopping and just shouting
hallelujah?
Do you know as it was?
He came to bear away the sin of
the world.
But as I read through this chapter, I
find that I need someone to search and
find me.
I need someone who's prepared to sacrifice for
me.
But I need something else.
I need someone who is not only a
searcher and a sacrifice, I need someone who's
a sealer.
I look at this very chapter, and I
read verse 33, and I see the glorious
story of Jesus Christ as there he is
baptized, and suddenly the Spirit of God comes
down and fills him.
I remember this, but my New Testament tells
me the epistle to the Ephesians, that the
same Spirit that sealed Christ as the Savior,
the sacrifice and the searcher, is the Spirit
that will seal you and I, sealed with
the Holy Ghost, as those that have come
to know the Savior.
But not only do I find here a
searcher, and find here a sacrifice, and find
here a sealer, or a seeker.
I find here, for you will remember in
verses 38 through verses 39, there were some
disciples of John the Baptist who come to
the Lord and say, Master, where dwelleth that?
And Jesus said, Come and see.
They went and abode with him.
And they suddenly found that while John the
Baptist had been a God Master, while they
had been willing disciples of John the Baptist,
they suddenly found someone who was greater than
John the Baptist.
Someone who could completely satisfy them.
They abode with him.
Actually, as we'll see in a moment, they
went on and witnessed for him, and they
found that he satisfied them.
My friend, if there is anything this world
needs today, it is a searching, sacrificing, sealing,
satisfying Savior.
That one is the one you can have
tonight.
First of all, he is a searcher.
How many times have I bowed my head
and said as it were, maybe not using
these words, but said to the Lord, O
thou infinite mind!
Thou infinite mind!
However could I comprehend if Jesus Christ had
not come into this world to revenge.
It would have been an empire of silence.
God would have been unknowable.
But Jesus Christ came, and God is knowable.
I often tell a little story.
Some few years ago I was in the
city of Liverpool.
I'm often there of course, but some few
years ago I was in the city of
Liverpool, and I was there for their great
Christmas rally.
There I is on the Mercy Tide, Liverpool
and Birkenhead and the area around.
Some maybe 40 or 50 assemblies of Christians
like this.
And every Christmas they hire the largest building
in Liverpool and have a united Christmas service.
And I've been invited to sleep at it,
to conduct this Christmas service.
I arrived in Liverpool rather early.
Well, rather early for the service, but late
enough for the shops to be shut.
They shut at half past five in my
country, you see.
And so I walked down Lord Street and
down yonder to Lime Street to look at
some of the shops.
I knew I wouldn't be able to spend
a penny.
I just had a look in the windows.
Right on the edge of Lord Street and
Lime Street, if any of you know the
city of Liverpool, there is a large jewellery
shop.
They have a window almost the length of
the chapel.
It comes right round the corner.
Christmas coming on, the lights were full on.
And I crossed the road to look at
the window and I caught my breath as
I saw that the whole window was filled
with clerks and watchers.
There were all sorts of clerks.
You know, the old cuckoo clock?
Cuckoo, cuckoo.
Well, I know, I stood and listened to
it.
Red, big chromium clocks and brass coloured clocks.
Little watches you had a job to see.
It was still!
There must have been hundreds of clocks and
watches in that window.
As I stood and looked, I said to
myself, what skill, what wisdom, what ability, that
as I looked in that window, I could
have told you something of the scale, I
could have told you something of the wisdom,
I could have told you something of the
patience of the watchmaker, but I couldn't have
told you anything about him.
I wouldn't know if he was a good
man or a bad man.
As far as his personality was concerned, I
knew nothing about him.
Because, please, it is a principle, it is
a fact, that personality can only be revealed
by personality.
Is God a person?
Is He a person?
Or is God just some influence?
The heavens declare the glory of God, the
firmament show us all His handiwork, oh, I
can see His skill, I can see His
power, I can see His might, but is
He a person?
Thank God He's a person.
Do you know how I know?
Because Jesus Christ came into the world to
reveal Him.
God knew that personality can only be revealed
by personality.
The Father sent the Son, He came into
this world as a man to reveal God,
and to lighten everyone that cometh into the
world, so to show that He cares, that
He pays the Son.
Oh, I know He's called the Word, for
I hear Him speaking.
I know He's called Love, for I hear
and see Him moving.
But, oh, bless God, if He's the Word
and if He's Love, He's light as well,
for I see Him shine.
And isn't it interesting that He's only called
Love twice, but in this Gospel He's called
Light 23 times.
I don't know what it means, it means
something.
Love twice, Light 23 times.
Isn't it wonderful to know, young man, He's
searching for you.
Young woman, He's a light, and doesn't He
search in a wonderful way?
A wonderful, wonderful way.
I have a very dear friend, Dr. MacFarlane.
With a name like that, of course, he's
Scottish, as you will understand.
And I love to hear him give his
testimony.
I may have shared it with you before,
but I want to share it again tonight.
I love to hear him give his testimony.
He went to Glasgow University to study medicine.
A young fellow up from Ayrshire.
Fine sportsman, a good rugby player.
And there came an occasion when, on a
Monday morning, they had to go into a
lecture theatre, and there on a table in
front of them, covered with a sheet, was
the body of a man who died in
a model lodging house the night before.
No one to claim him.
Before they buried him in a pauper's grave.
His body was to be used.
There was a crowd of young men and
women there.
Medical students.
And grown somewhat callous.
And there they talked about the rugby game
on Saturday, and about the dance they'd been
to Saturday night, and the flowing gains they'd
had on the Lord's Day.
Just a crowd of chattering young folk.
Fine, good, clean, somewhat mole young folk.
Suddenly there walked in to that lecture theatre
the professor, who was to give the lecture.
He heard the chatter.
He heard the laughter.
He saw the smiling.
Taking his gavel, he banged upon his desk,
and he said, Will you be silent?
Looking at them as only he could.
He said, I want you to remember that
this pointed to the body under the sheet.
This was once the home of an immortal
soul.
You will be revered, my friend.
The young medical student said he never heard
a word of the lecture.
He never saw them as they took their
knife and dissected that body.
All he heard was, This was once the
home of an immortal soul.
From the lecture theatre he went.
Back to his lodgings.
Back to find a Bible.
Back to turn his page and read.
Back.
Find Jesus Christ, and let Jesus Christ, for
he's alive tonight.
I don't want to share with you again
the way he's shone into my life.
I only know that he's alive.
He's searching the air.
He's lightened up everyone.
The covetous of the world.
But he is not only a light to
searcher, but he's a lamb of sacrifice.
Sit on the Baptist, behold, the Lamb of
God, who bareth away the sin of the
world.
In a Bible-loving church like this, in
an era of America that's called the Bible
Belt, it's not necessary for me to go
back into the Old Testament and remind you
of the one who is called the Lamb
of God.
We could spend time tonight in reminding you
of Abel's land.
We could take time tonight to remind you
of Israel's land.
We could take time tonight to remind you
of the leper's land.
I only know this, that you are as
familiar with them as I am.
But I want to ask the question.
You may be very familiar with them, but
how have you acted in the light of
them?
You will remember that Abel's land tells us
that sin can be removed.
Israel's land tells us hell can be removed.
Oh, isn't that wonderful?
But as Abel offered his sacrifice, he learned
the lesson that sin can be removed.
And I went my way to Calvary's cross,
and I see the Lamb of God who
bareth away the sin of the world.
And I remember the words of Peter.
He took my sin in his own body.
Greek prepositions have always been difficult, and I
love the Revised Version.
He bore my sin in his own body
to the tree.
You see him there.
He gave himself.
Tonight I can say, Oh, my sin!
Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part, but the whole,
was nailed to the cross, and I'll bear
it no more.
Praise the Lord, it's well with us all.
Oh, friend, could I ask you, in the
words of the old Salvation Army hymn, have
you listened to Jesus from the cleansing pounds
he washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Abel's land removes sin, and Christ, the Lamb
of God, removes sin.
Israel's land removes hell.
I see them as they go and take
a lamb without spot and without blemish, and
they sprinkle the lentil on the doorpost of
the house, and they enter in sheltering under
the blood, and the angel of death comes,
and as it hovers over Egypt, it looks
down and it sees the house on which
the blood has been sprinkled, and it says,
Oh, they've beaten me already!
And all they've done is poke inside, sheltering
under the blood, removed from death, and in
being removed from death, removed from hell, taken
away from the bondage of Egypt, with their
feet placed on the road that leads to
the celestial tomb.
Oh, bless God!
God will not twice demand, says the old
hymn writer, once for my bleeding shorty's hand,
and then for mine?
Great God, God gazes at Calvary.
For those that have trusted Christ, he says,
I've accepted the death of Christ for those
people.
He will not twice demand, once at my
bleeding shorty's hand, and then at mine?
Do you know how glad I'm saying?
Oh, I think that.
But if Abel's lamb delivered the sponge, see,
this was lamb delivered from hell, the leper's
lamb.
It's delivered from uncleanness.
It's a tremendous story.
Maybe one evening we might have to preach
from it, I don't know.
But the 14th chapter of Leviticus is a
chapter that I feel somehow we're almost neglecting
in our modern preaching.
You will not forget God laid down the
principle of a man who was a leper
before he could ever be received back into
the Israel of God, before he was ever
received back to his home, to his people,
he had to take a lamb and a
dog.
And he was received as one that was
cleansed.
And oh, bless God tonight, Jesus Christ not
only delivers us from the punishment of sin,
but as far as the east, are you
listening, Blake?
As far as the east is removed from
the west, so far has he removed our
transgressions from who?
Us!
Thank you, sister.
From us!
Not received or removed our transgressions from him,
he's removed them from us!
Hallelujah!
Oh, what salvation is found in Jesus Christ!
Tell me something, sir.
With your great intelligence now, tell me something.
Could you think out a better salvation than
that?
That will remove us from sin and remove
sin from us?
And praise God, Jesus is the Lamb of
God and he's the one, blessed be his
name, who is a sacrifice.
But he is not only a searcher and
he is not only a sacrifice, but bless
God, as we read the story, there was
a sealer!
There was a sealer for him!
Oh, how do I know he's the sacrifice?
How do I know he's the light?
How am I certain of it?
Because God sealed him.
Sealed him with the Holy Spirit.
By the way, by the way, I know
we've mentioned this in the conference before, but
I'm going to say it again.
I think it's important we become so selfish,
so selfish, we forget that
God never asks anything of us that he
does not ask of himself.
God never tells us to do something he
hasn't done himself.
God laid the principle of evidence.
And every lawyer in this service tonight knows
the principle of evidence and it's this.
In the mouth of two, let every word
be established.
God says you must not listen to the
evidence of one man.
It is in the mouth of two witnesses.
Let every word be established.
God never himself asks us to believe anything
unless he gives us two witnesses.
The Gospel of Luke.
There are two witnesses as to the royalty
of Jesus Christ.
John the Baptist baptizes the Lord and suddenly
the Spirit of God descends as a dove
and a voice comes out of heaven, the
voice of the Father, this is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased.
And we have the two-fold witness of
the Spirit and the Father that he is
the royal Son.
Move along in the Gospel of Luke please.
Let's climb a mountain.
Let's see the Lord transfigured before his disciples.
And we have the two-fold witness not
to his royalty but now to his redemption.
For there appeared Moses and Elias and they
spoke of the decease that he should accomplish
in Jerusalem.
Hallelujah, the two-fold witness as to his
redemption.
Come with me to the twenty-fourth of
Luke.
Shall we repent of Luke?
Come with me at the twelfth of Luke.
Come with me to the twenty-fourth.
We have the two-fold witness not to
his royalty, not to his redemption.
We have the two-fold witness as to
his resurrection.
As they came to the tomb and they
looked in and they saw two, one at
the head and one at the foot, saying,
I seek you the living among the dead.
He's not here, he's risen.
And Dr. Luke wrote the Acts of the
Apostles.
And he gave us the two-fold witness
not only to his royalty and not only
to his redemption and not only to his
resurrection, but he gave us the two-fold
witness as to his return.
There were two men who said, why stand
ye gazing up into heaven?
This Saint Jesus shall come again as you've
seen him ascend into heaven.
Sir, I haven't followed cunningly devised any of
this.
The two-fold witness is my God and
I see him here in the Gospel of
John as he is sealed.
And I remember this, I remember this, that
the Spirit of God is given that we
might be sealed, sealed with the Holy Ghost.
The ninth chapter of Ezekiel speaks indeed of
the living and it says it's sealed with
indelible ink.
I don't know if it was Stephens or
Parkers, I only know this, that that's the
word of the Holy Spirit and the word
of God.
Oh, my friend, that great ninth chapter of
Ezekiel, it tells us that a thing is
marked, it's sealed.
Why, the epistle of the Ephesians says we
can be sealed.
But we're not in the Spirit of Christ,
we're not in it.
I come from a, from a sheep rearing
area.
You don't grow sheep over here very much,
not in North Carolina, I'm told.
I'll let you into a secret.
All the months I've been here, I've only
had lamb once.
But I come from a sheep rearing area.
Some time ago, I was down in the
county of Devonshire.
I was staying with a dear friend of
mine, Morley Bedford, on a farm in a
little place called Atterbury, right in the heart
of the country.
And I picked up the local newspaper, the
Western Morning News.
There's one part of the newspaper I always
enjoy reading.
Lost?
You know, it's full of some of that
old nonsense for the newspapers, especially the adverts.
So I said, it's just nonsense.
But that's life!
Life!
Lost and found.
Lost!
A dot more rare.
License number?
Silver under white horn.
Well, I knew what it meant to have
a dot more ram, because on Dartmoor, the
great moor, where there's no fences around and
they turn the sheep out, every ram has
to be licensed.
They don't allow any old ram to go
out there with a sheep.
They have to be licensed.
I could understand that.
I could understand it had a number.
But I couldn't understand this silver under white
horn.
And so I called my farmer friend.
I said, Morley, what does this mean, silver
under white horn?
And this is what he told me.
He said, old friend, that's an old custom.
An old custom.
Still some of the old stop to it.
Others don't.
They mostly punch their ears, you know.
But years ago, and still some of the
old farmers today, when they turn a ram
out on the moor, they take their knife,
and they make a little slit in the
skin, a little T-slit.
Then with their knife, they prise back the
skin, and they take what we used to
call an old joey.
You won't know anything about those.
But an old, threatening bit.
And it used to be a little silver
coring.
And they'd clean it, and they'd press that
little silver coring behind the skin, and hold
the skin back.
And it would tester for a while, and
no doubt be painful, but it would heal.
And the wool would grow over it.
And no one would know where that silver
was except the owner of that ram.
My friend said he was in Exeter Market,
saw the auctioneer walking the boards, came to
a pain with a number of sheep and
a ram.
The auctioneer stopped and said, Now, these have
been sent in by farmers so and so.
Suddenly a man leaned over the fencing and
said, Don't you sell that ram?
That's mine.
You know, the auctioneer looked.
Yours?
It was sent in by a farmer.
I don't care who sent it in.
It's mine.
Don't you sell that ram?
You know, the farmers gathered around.
They thought there was going to be a
fight, you know.
Market day.
Bit of entertainment.
And suddenly, the man who brought them in,
called by the auctioneer, That man?
He looked and he said, That's my ram.
No, said the other man.
If it's your ram, show me the silver.
The man flustered and said, I don't put
silver in my sheep when I do.
And into the pen the man jumped and
turned the sheep across his knee and said,
Sir, the auctioneer from here, feel that.
Right where he put his finger, there was
the silver.
I haven't got time to talk about the
silver of redemption.
I just want to say this.
That when God saves me, the Spirit seals
me.
And the devil may come along and say,
It's mine.
And God says, show me the silver.
He sealed it.
And if you trust Christ, and you're in
it, and you trust Christ and need it,
He'll seal you with his hand.
The man who's searched for, and the man
who's saved, and the man who's healed, is
the man or woman who needs to be
satisfied.
And hallelujah, he's satisfied.
Oh, bless God he does.
Why, here they were, these two disciples of
John the Baptist.
And they heard John say, Behold the Lamb
of God who beareth away the sin of
the world.
And that's just what they wanted.
The sin taken away.
And they say, Master, we're glorified.
Jesus said, Come into it.
They went and they abode with him.
If you all trust Jesus Christ tonight, I
tell you what you'll have to do.
You'll have to abide with him.
They went to abide with him.
And when they abode with him, listen.
They speak to Jesus.
And they listen to Jesus.
And they abode with Jesus.
And they witness for Jesus.
That's the sure sign of a man who's
trusted Christ.
We abide with him.
We want to be where Christ is.
We want to do the things that are
pleasing to him.
We go to dwell with him.
And if you came to my home, you
would conduct yourself as pleasing to me.
And if I came to your home, I
would conduct myself as pleasing to you.
And if I dwell with Christ, if I
dwell with Christ, I will conduct myself as
pleasing to him.
They abode with him.
They labored for him.
Oh, isn't that wonderful?
One of those two was called Andrew, the
patron saint of the Saulwinners.
I don't know if that's scriptural, but it
sounds good anyway.
The patron saint of the Saulwinners.
Because Andrew, you remember, he was the man
that first found his own brother and took
him to Jesus.
And then Andrew was the man that found
the little boy with the loaves and fishes
and took him to Jesus.
And Andrew was the one who, when the
wise Greeks came, saying, Sirs!
I like that, don't you?
Do you know, I must confess, I do
like your southern sir.
I did.
I not only like it because of its
politeness, but I like it because it's scriptural.
You imagine these wise Greek men coming to
some rough old fisherman, saying, Sirs!
I mean, you say sir to nobility, don't
you?
Good old rough fisherman.
Well, that's what happens when a man comes
to Christ.
He learns to be polite.
I only know this.
They came and said, Sirs!
We would see Jesus.
And Andrew said, Come on, I'll introduce you
to it.
That's what happens when you abide with the
Lord.
You want to tell your family about it.
You want to tell the children about it.
Hallelujah!
You want to tell men and women from
afar about it.
Because he sat there.
You sat there.
All this first chapter of Job.
This searcher.
This sacrifice.
This healer.
This sacrificer.
He could be your savior tonight, if you'll
trust him.
One story in my class.
Not the sort of story that I use
very often, because it is an emotional story.
I do tell it sometimes, but I just
feel I'd like to tell it tonight.
There was born into the home of a
rather wealthy couple in my land, a little
boy.
I say, what joy!
Their first little boy.
And, Mum, you'll understand how that mother many
a time went to the cot where her
little one laid and passed her hand over
the cot and watched her little boy.
And everything was lovely for the first few
days.
But as the days went by, there was
a desperate gnawing in her heart.
For as she passed her hand over that
cot, the baby's eyes never followed her.
And you mothers know how concerned she was.
They brought in the doctor.
She tried to get the attention of that
little one.
Noise would get the attention.
Movement.
He turned to the man and his wife
and said, I'm sorry.
Being somewhat wealthy, they were able to bring
not only from our own land, but from
the continent, the leading surgeons and eye specialists.
And one from Switzerland said, I believe when
that lad grows to be maybe 13 or
14, we might we see that he's healthy
and strong.
So the father went down into what we
call the Garden of England into the county
of Kent and purchased a little farm, or
rather a home with quite parkland.
The boy was raised as a country boy.
Healthy and strong, but unable to play.
Many a time, the father would take the
boy and they'd walk together across the paddock,
across the green fields.
And one day as he walked down the
green field, his father, the boy said to
his father, Dad, where are we?
Dad said, we're in a field, son.
A field, Dad?
What's a field?
Well, it's green grass, son.
Green grass.
What's green grass, Dad?
Well, green's a color, son.
The grass, let me, and he took a
handful and put it in his boy's hand.
And the boy said, but Daddy, what's green?
And the father tried to tell the boy
what green grass looked like in our little
head.
Would you permit me to ask you a
question?
Have you ever bowed your head and said,
God, thank you, I can see.
But the lad was fourteen.
They took him away to the great Ormond
Street Hospital, the great children's hospital in the
city of London.
And the surgeon came over from Switzerland and
they operated.
They had the bandages round his eyes, but
his body was healthy and strong.
He was a country lad, and he squirmed.
The specialist said, look, take him home.
You could afford to have a nurse with
him.
Take him home.
We'll come down and take the bandages off
at your house.
Well, after the period of time, when the
wounds would have healed, they came down to
the house.
The surgeon looked out and it was a
rather dull day, and he looked out and
saw the green paddock, so beautiful.
He said, let's go out there.
And as they went, they took off the
bandage.
And suddenly, a fourteen-year-old boy, he
looked.
For the first time in his life, he
could see.
He'd been so useful.