guilt and reconciles it to God.

III. And so, lastly, let me ask you to notice that this Sin-bearer of
the world is our Sin-bearer if we 'behold' Him.

John was simply summoning ignorant eyes to look, and telling of what
they would see. But his call is susceptible, without violence, of a
far deeper meaning. This is really the one truth that I want to press
upon you, dear friends--'Behold the Lamb of God!'

What is that beholding? Surely it is nothing else than our recognising
in Him the great and blessed work which I have been trying to
describe, and then resting ourselves upon that great Lord and
sufficient Sacrifice. And such an exercise of simple trust is well
named beholding, because they who believe do see, with a deeper and a
truer vision than sense can give. You and I can see Christ more really
than these men who stood round Him, and to whom His flesh was 'a
veil'--as the Epistle to the Hebrews calls it--hiding His true
divinity and work. They who thus behold by faith lack nothing either
of the directness or of the certitude that belong to vision. 'Seeing
is believing,' says the cynical proverb. The Christian version inverts
its terms, 'Believing is seeing.' 'Whom having not seen ye love, in
whom though now ye see Him not, yet believing ye rejoice.'

And your simple act of 'beholding,' by the recognition of His work and
the resting of yourself upon it, makes the world's Sin-bearer your
Sin-bearer. You appropriate the general blessing, like a man taking in
a little piece of a boundless prairie for his very own. Your
possession does not make my possession of Him less, for every eye gets
its own beam, and however many eyes wait upon Him, they all receive