This was a sign indeed,--a sign addressed to a man who had been waiting day after day, perhaps year after year, for some outward accident to make him well,--that health and disease are dependent upon no accidents; that the power of life is an inward power; that there is One in whom it dwells; that He in whom it dwells is near to the weakest, the most helpless, even the most sinful. It would seem, from the words which our Lord spoke to this man afterwards, '_Go, and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee_,' as if He had selected a man in whom all these conditions met, who was the oldest and most powerless of all the sufferers there, and had brought the sufferings upon himself by his misdoings. The demonstration, therefore, was complete. Men--the very lowest men--are not the dependants upon outward things, no, nor upon the visitations of angels. Such visitations may be appointed; but there is One who has a right to call Himself a Son--One in whom the mind and purpose of the Lord of angels is expressed--One who fulfils, not occasionally but continually, His purposes of health and restoration to men--One who is the Son of Man--who has sympathy with men, and can take away their infirmities, because He knows them, enters into them, suffers them. Thus this cure is bringing us to the point to which St. John has been bringing us in all the previous passages of his Gospel. This sign at the Pool of Bethesda, like all the other signs we have been considering, reveals to us the Word who is the Source of life and health to all creatures. We are led from the messenger, visible or invisible, to Him who was with God and was God. We are led from the mere friends or helpers of man to that Word made flesh, the Son of Man. We are led finally to a Son who has come to reveal a Father.