364 THE YOUTH'S CABINET.

Wa it Meee 1!

se tal

 

-_ ~ A yp
) gE 7 oa Fk at

nal

The Pool of Bethesda.

HERE has been a great deal of spec- | gel, they thought, went down at certain
ulation in respect to the character periods, and agitated the water, and then,
of the waters of Bethesda. No | before the mineral substance, held in sus-
historian of antiquity, except the pension, had subsided, the invalid, by

evangelist John, affords us any light on | plunging into-the pool, could be cured,
the subject ; and the little that this writer | A man who had been sick nearly forty
says is hardly sufficient to give us more | years, according to the divine historian,
than a general idea of the spring that, in | was found by our Lord, in one of the
the time of our Saviour, had received that | rooms built over or near the pool, waiting
name. The narrative connected with it, for an opportunity to try the virtues of
from the pen of the writer alluded to, is | the water. He was nearly, perhaps quite,
briefly this:—There was a pool in the helpless; so that he was unable to get
city of Jerusalem, called Bethesda—a | into the pool. Several different agitations
“house of mercy,” the name signifies. of the water had taken place while he
In the rooms connected with this pool | had been lying there; but he was unable
there were numerous people, afflicted with | to take advantage of them. In. every
different diseases, waiting for an opportu- | case, some more fortunate and less help-
nity to bathe in the water—it being a no- | less invalid supplanted him. In this situ-
tion current among the Jews of that time, ation the poor man was found by our
that there was a healing property in the | Saviour, and by a palpable miracle on his
water, and especially, immediately after | part, instantly cured.

the pool had been agitated from: the bot- | From this narrative we are hardly wat-
tom, so that the medicinal element, what- | ranted in the opinion that there was any-
ever it was, became more generally dis- | thing miraculous in the cures that were
tributed through the entire pool. An an- | effected at this spring. It does not ap