copyists to have supplied the omission by inserting one. (_c_) The explanation offered by the doubtful passage is itself incredible. It is a marvel, but it is in no sense a miracle. The irregular and fitful appearance of help by such an angelic visitor, would have witnessed to no truth, would have had no tendency to confer faith in God or his grace. “That God would thus miraculously interpose to throw down from time to time a boon among a company of cripples, to be seized by the most forward, selfish, and eager, leaving the most helpless and miserable to be overwhelmed again and again with bitter disappointment, is a supposition not admissible.”--(_Jacob Abbott’s Notes on the N. T._) (_d_) These considerations have led the latest and best scholars, with substantial unanimity, to omit the explanatory words of ver. 4, and latter clause of ver. 3. So Alford, Tholuck, Ebrard, Trench, Olshausen, Meyer, Tischendorf, and Tregelles. But though it is no part of the sacred record, it probably correctly states what was the popular belief among the Jews, or at least among such as resorted to this spring for cure. The real basis of this belief is indicated by recent researches. These have made it evident that the pools in and about Jerusalem were connected with each other by underground aqueducts. Dr. Robinson gives an account of his exploration of such an aqueduct connecting two pools, the Fountain of the Virgin and the Pool of Siloam. He satisfied himself that water flowed from the one to the other reservoir, and he witnessed the “troubling of the water” in the Fountain of the Virgin. “We perceived the water rapidly bubbling up from under the lower step. In less than five minutes it had risen in the basin nearly or quite a foot; and we could hear it gurgling off through the interior passage. In ten minutes more it had ceased to flow; and the water in the basin was again reduced to its former level.” His observation has been since confirmed by others. It is now difficult to see how the Fountain of the Virgin could ever have been surrounded by porches or made a resting-place for the sick; and it is quite certain that the Fountain of the Virgin cannot be asserted with any positiveness to have been the Pool of Bethesda. But these discoveries indicate the probably true explanation of the troubling of the water mentioned, not by John it will be remembered, but by some subsequent copyist, in the text. The Pool of Bethesda, probably, was connected by an underground passage with some intermittent spring, possibly possessing healing virtues, and the bubbling of the water from time to time gave rise to the legend of an angelic visitant, which certain of the Jews accepted, but which the Evangelist does not confirm, and to which there is no reference in other literature. 5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity[162] thirty and eight years.