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Germs of Thought.

The Disciples' Question and Christ's Answer.

"HIS DISCIPLES ASKED HIM, SAYING, MASTER, WHO DID SIN, THIS MAN, OR HIS PARENTS, THAT HE WAS BORN BLIND? JESUS ANSWERED, NEITHER HATH THIS MAN SINNED, NOR HIS PARENTS: BUT THAT THE WORKS OF GOD SHOULD BE MADE MANIFEST IN HIM."-John ix. 2, 3.

THIS narrative is, perhaps, the most dramatic in the pages of the New Testament. At the same time it is one of the most simple and natural. A poor man, blind from his birth, sits, probably, somewhere near the temple, begging of the passers by. Something in his demeanour arrests the attention of Christ. Probably he has asked an alms, as his wont was. Jesus stops, and instead of giving him the expected coin begins a merciful work of healing. The man evidently was well known. And the different modes in which the people deal with the fact of the healing are pourtrayed with a truthfulness and fidelity to nature that are convincing proofs of its genuineness. The wonder and questioning of the neighbours, the reluctance of the Pharisees to acknowledge the miracle, their malicious endeavour to discredit Jesus because he had healed the man on the sabbath day, their persistent attempts to silence testimony, the timidity and cowardice of the man's parents, the simple but courageous loyalty of the man himself, are all told with graphic naturalness, with life-like touches that make the scenes live before us.

question of the disciples by When they beheld this man

Nor less true to nature is the which the narrative is introduced. they immediately assumed that sin was at the root of his suffering. Either himself or his parents had been guilty of some grievous wrong which God had severely punished. His blindness

was the penalty of some forgotten deed of evil.

So they

questioned, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Now this question was based on assumptions in which there was some truth and much error. And our object now will be to separate between the false and true in the ideas that possessed the disciples.

I.-Look first at THE TRUTH THAT UNDERLAY THIS QUESTION OF THE DISCIPLES. When they asked, "Who did sin, this man, or his parents," they assumed, and rightly,—

1. That sin deserves punishment. All sin is the transgression of God's law. God's law is ever wise and good and loving. Therefore all sin is the violation of what is just and wise and good. And because it is so it merits chastisement. The mistake of men is that they think of the law of God as being an arbitrary restriction of our liberty. They conceive of God as narrowing human action by rules which have no ground save in the caprice of His will. Now that is a grievous mistake. What God forbids He forbids for our welfare. And what He commands He commands for our own blessing. When He utters His "Thou shalt, thou shalt not," He is but revealing the laws that gird our life, on which our well-being depends. When He declares, "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to any graven image" or creature likeness, that is no mere jealous guarding of His own exclusive right to be worshipped. It is the promulgation of a law, disobedience to which involves the transgressor in degradation and debasement. For the worshipper surely becomes like his god. And to worship any being lower than the highest is to wrong and injure your own soul. So when He declares, “Thou shalt not steal, or kill, or covet," these are not arbitrary restrictions of our freedom, but essential conditions of our welfare. Nothing that God has disallowed can be safely indulged in. Nothing that He has enjoined can be safely neglected. And this not merely because He has threatened to punish or promised to reward, but because it is in the nature of certain actions to injure us, and of others to bring blessing. God's law is but the expression of

perfect love and unbounded wisdom. It is based on eternal realities, and not on the mere chance caprice of the moment or the age. It is rooted in the nature of things. Deeper than that we cannot go. And, we say, whatever contravenes this law, is a violation of eternal right and of Divine love. Sin, therefore, deserves to be punished. So much of truth there was in the minds of the disciples when they asked the question, “Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind?"

2. That sin is followed by punishment. It would be ignoring a vast accumulation of human experience to deny this. Sin brings a certain amount of necessary injury along with it. In some measure and degree it is always punished, not, indeed, always immediately, nor always in exact proportion to the offence. But just as you cannot grasp fire without being burned, neither can you sin without suffering. The transgressor may, indeed, prosper in worldly matters. Success may attend him in business, a place of honour may be assigned him in society, wealth may accumulate in his hands, friends may gather round him who are ignorant of his evil or who wink at it. But for all that, his evil deeds are treasuring up wrath for him against the day of wrath. His character is becoming degenerate and debased. All perverse

transgression of right corrupts and degrades him who practises it. His sweetest affections are deflowered, his holiest instincts become perverted, his moral faculties are thrown into confusion and chaos. You cannot trace the operation, it is going on in secrecy within his heart. But as the worm eats into the timbers of the vessel till they are honey-combed through and through, so that the first great strain of wind or tide will shatter her to pieces, even so the man who lives in sin is becoming secretly and unaided a moral and spiritual wreck. The ancients had a saying that the gods have feet of wool, meaning that penalty often follows the sinner noiselessly and unobserved, that it comes on him unawares. But come it will.

3. That the consequences of sin are often hereditary. The man might be suffering for evils of which himself was innocent but which his parents or ancestors had committed. Why this should be so is a difficult question, but that it is so admits of no doubt.

Enfeebled constitutions and morbid tendencies to disease and depraved moral biases are transmitted ofttimes from one generation to another. Even to the third and fourth geneneration does this malignant legacy descend. Is this fearful fact a testimony against sin written in the groans and anguish and misery of the innocent? Is sin so evil that its results thus reach the unborn? O what a blackness and awfulness gather round the nature of sin where we thus trace its effects! Only one thought can lighten in some measure this terrible fact. If the innocent suffer for the deeds of others, they are not chargeable with their guilt. And if we inherit biases or tendencies to evil, God will take these into account in dealing with us and judging us. If men have had to wrestle with transmitted infirmities and proclivities to wrong, they will be judged very differently from those who have escaped these taints of blood. When God scans the life of yonder poor city Arab, who was born in sin and cradled in vice and trained to crime, He will deal gently with him. He will take into account those defects which he received without guilt of his

own.

So much of truth there was in the ideas of the disciples which prompted the question, "Who did sin, this man, or his parents?”

II.—WE PASS ON TO CONSIDER WHAT WAS FALSE AND UNTRUE IN THEIR IDEA.

1. First of all they erred in applying right principles in a wrong manner. They were right in holding that sin deserves punishment, that it is punished, and that its taint is often hereditary. But they were wrong in applying these true ideas to the case of this poor sufferer. Because this man was blind they rashly concluded that either himself or his parents had deeply sinned. It was precisely the same harsh and uncharitable error into which the friends of Job fell. It is precisely the error of many to-day who interpret rashly God's providences to the disadvantage of their neighbours. Especially are men prone to see in the disasters of their opponents the tokens of God's anger. If those from whom we differ in religious opinion, or other matters, suffer some calamity, "Ah," says the human heart, "there,

I knew it, I knew they were wrong and would be punished." Let us guard against rash, uncharitable judgments. Think you that those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all that dwelt in Jerusalem. "I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish."

2. They looked upon all affliction as punishment—as being the penalty for some wrong. They thought all suffering by men was an expression of God's anger. Disease, calamity, loss of goods, bereavement and every kind of sorrow were to be traced back to the Divine vengeance against some violation of His law. No doubt these disciples had been educated in this belief. It was a cherished doctrine among the old Hebrews. They had been taught to believe that obedience to God would be rewarded, and disobedience punished by temporal blessing or cursing. And the whole economy of Moses was arranged to secure this end. Temporal penalties were inflicted for spiritual offences. He that blasphemed the name of the Lord was stoned to death; so was the sabbath-breaker equally with the man-slayer. It is easy to understand how this social arrangement should give rise to the idea that all suffering was a punishment for sin. But Christ taught the world a new and higher conception of the meaning of suffering. He forbade the uncharitable inference that affliction was necessarily the result of sin. He showed that the sufferings of this present life have a wise and gracious purpose to fulfila purpose often far off, unseen. In other words, suffering is often purely disciplinary. It is sent to prune, as the gardener's knife does; to purge, as the fire purges the gold from the dross. It is sent in love to make the weak strong and the good better. It is a necessary part in man's education, without which the full meaning of manhood would never be revealed. Suffering brings out some of the finest features of human character. It developes that long enduring patience by virtue of which men press on through defeat and disappointment to ultimate success. into play the tender sympathy and devoted love and heavenly compassion which are among the chief adornments of our nature. How but for human suffering could such characters have been as Florence Nightingale, John Howard, and Mr. Müller, of Bristol.

It calls

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