getfulness of Eze. xviii. 20, etc. There are few notions that men seem to cling to so naturally, as the notion that bodily suf- ferings, and all afflictions, are the direct consequences of sin, and that a diseased or afflicted person must necessarily be a very wicked man. This was precisely the short-sighted view that Job's three friends took up when they came to visit him, and against which Job contended. This was the idea of the people at Melita, when Paul was bitten by a viper, after the ship- wreck: "This man is a murderer." (Acts xxviii. 4.) This appears to have been at the bottom of the question of the dis- ciples: "There is suffering; then there must have been sin. Whose sin was it?"
Chrysostom thinks that the disciples remembered our Lord's words to the paralytic whom He healed (chap. v. 14) : " Thou art made whole ; sin no more ; " and asked now to what sin this man's blindness might be traced. This, however, seems very improbable, considering the length of time between the two miracles.
Hengstenberg observes that the fallacy of supposing that special afflictions are the result of some special sins, "com- mends itself to low and common spirits by its simplicity and palpableness. It has the advantage of rendering it needless to weep with them that weep. It saves a man from the obliga- tion, when he sees heavy affliction, of smiting on his breast, and saying ' God be merciful to me a sinner.' It gives the natural man the comfortable feeling that he is so much the better than the sufferer, as he is more fortunate."
Those who wish to go more deeply into the subject will find it fully discussed by the great Dutch diviue, Gomarus.
It is worth notice that the word here rendered " Master " is the same that is rendered "Rabbi" in five other places in St. John. (i. 38 ; i. 49 ; iii. 2 ; iii. 26 ; vi. 25.) Why our translators did not observe uniformity in their translation of the word throughout this Gospel is not very clear.
3. — [Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned. ..parents.'] This first part of our Lord's answer is elliptical. The sense of course must be supplied from the context. Our Lord did not mean that neither this blind man nor his parents had committed any sin at all, but that it was not any special sin of his or theirs which had caused his blindness. Nor yet did our Lord mean that the sins of parents could never entail disease on children; but that the case before Him, at any rate, was not such a case. Of course he did not mean us to forget that sin is the great primeval cause of all the evils that are in the world.
[But that the icorlcs of G<<d... manifest in him.'] The meaning of this must be, that the man's blindness was permitted and overruled by God, in order that His works of mercy in healing him might be shown to men. This blindness was allowed and ordained by God, not because he was specially wicked, but in