John ix. 4. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day : the night cometh, when no man can work.
IN the circumstances of mankind we behold an inequality, which, at first sight, appears strange and unaccountable. One is born possessed of all the faculties that can conduce to his welfare : another is brought into the world deformed in body, defective in intellect, and, on the whole, in a state scarcely superior to the brute creation. This must certainly, in the first instance, be traced to the sovereignty of God ; who has a right to give to his creatures, or withhold from them, whatsoever he shall see fit. He has not injured us by making us inferior to the angels ; nor does he injure any one, if he make him inferior to the beasts also. But, in these sovereign exercises of his will, he often has a special view to his own glory. Perhaps, at no period of the world did he ever give Satan liberty to exert his power over the bodies of men to so great an extent as during the time of our Lord's ministry upon earth. In this dispensation, he gave to the Lord an opportunity of displaying, to a greater degree than he could otherwise have done, his power over Satan and all his hosts. We know, from authority, that this was the reason of our Lord's not interposing to heal Lazarus, as soon as the application was made to him. In staying two whole days after he was informed of the dying state of Lazarus, he appeared regardless of the requests which had been sent to him by his much-loved friends, Mary and Martha. But he assigned as the reason of that delay, that, from the state of Lazarus, it was intended to bring glory both to God the Father, and to himself, as his Father's agenta. In like manner we are informed, that, for a similar end, a man was born into the world blind. . A notion having obtained amongst the Jews, that there was a state of existence
a John xi. -3, 4, 14, 15.