soft-green neck; just to be alive, and walk the kindly, brothering ways; just to be alive, and know that the world is one vast red Calvary which Joseph's garden touches to immortal bloom; just to be alive, and to feel that you are going to be more and more alive forever-is it not enough to make you aware of the music behind "the creaking of the tented sky, the ticking of Eternity"?

VIII

GOD'S USE OF AFFLICTION

And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."ST. JOHN IX: I, 2, 3.

"W

HO sinned?" It is one of the old, old questions of man. Sin is such a gruesome factor in our race, ranging so wide, cutting so deep, hurting so many, that the Jew beheld this dark assassin hiding in the background of every calamity, of every sorrow, of every sickness. And there is so much authority in human experience for the ancient Jew's viewpoint, that men do well to pause before filing a single bill of exceptions. But that bill has been filed, and by no mere man. It was the Christ who breaks the power of sin, who cleanses from the guilt of sin, who saves from sin-it was this Christ who said that all of life's afflictions are not due to sin, that there are exceptions to this all but universal cause of human suffering. But the disciples thought there was no exception; and when they saw the man blind from his birth, they asked: "Rabbi, who sinned,

this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?" He is blind; therefore, he sinned, or else his parents sinned before him-that is their viewpoint. Christ's answer, in its large suggestiveness and manifold implications, is one of the grandest utterances that ever came from His wisdom-speaking lips. It reveals His profound consciousness of world-mysteries; it shows His insight into those unexplored remainders constantly coming into the human foreground out of half-lights and shadows too deep for thought; it manifests His comprehension of a problem that haunts the wise man and the ignorant, the ancient world and the modern; and it throws a kindly light upon the question of human affliction and God's use of it. So, in our study, let us give the term affliction its widest meaning.

I

Suppose we begin our inquiry close to the roots of the disciples' problem, as well as the world's vast problem—the problem of sin. Now, in order to sin, you must have a sinner; you must have a will choosing that which is wrong; a heart and mind giving hospitality to those spiritual tramps which have no place on the highways of right. Well, this much is certain: You do not have to go very far to find such a man or woman. Like the Master, as you pass by, going your various ways in life, you may easily see these sinningly blind

people from their birth. They have never truly visioned the beauty of holiness; their heart-eyes have never beheld the awfulness of goodness; their souls have never been consciously stirred by the creative power of that new and second birth which leagues us in with God and Christ and conquest, making life, as Amiel said, to be a perpetual achievement. Like the philosopher's cave men, they are sitting with their backs to the light. They have no eastern windows, no dew-drenched morning, no heavenly greenness.

Now what is your personal attitude toward this terrible affliction named sin-sin not as a theory, sin not as a theologic doctrine, but sin as a destructive, blinding, killing power in human life? Your attitude may be that of the disciples. "Who did sin," you may ask, "these people or their spiritual ancestors, mayhap in some previous state of existence, that they should be born blind?" And then you may go nonchalantly on your speculative way, yourself stupidly blind to one of the bewildering riddles of the universe. But you may also choose the second and nobler alternative, manifesting the very spirit of the Master. "Why are these multitudes, my friends, my acquaintances, blind and sinful?" you may say. "I cannot answer all of my own question, of course. It involves too many mysteries, a world in the making, heredity, the tremendous problem of evil-these and a thousand questions I cannot answer. But of this much I am

absolutely sure: Here is my spiritual opportunity; the works of God's redeeming grace may be made manifest in them through me; I will tell them of the all-glorious Saviour; then they, too, may be able to say with the man no longer blind: 'One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.'"

Let me say again: Sin is no mere make-believe; no game of blind-man's buff; none but fools make a mock at sin. Oh, never apologize for sin; never minimize the horror of sin-at least not until Gethsemane and Calvary and humanity's raging inner hells have been blotted from the map of the spiritual universe. Yet does not the horror of sin manifest the exceeding glory of the Christ's forgiveness? Herein doth God manifest His works in the supreme reaches of reality. Rightly conceived, God's redemption in Christ dwarfs all of God's other achievements. It leads us in behind the rind of matter that we may see the operations of Spirit, that we may behold the beating of the Divine Heart as He pumps His crimson, cleansing tides of health through the moral sicknesses of the race. Then follows another question: What higher, diviner, more delicate work is there in all God's world than that one immortal mortal should tell his brother immortal mortal of the Saviour from sin? You will find no higher work than this, my friend. You may tunnel under the rivers; you may fly through the air on mechanical wings; you