yet sound in your ears ! Be thankful, I pray you, for this distinguishing grace which has been vouchsafed to you : and increase not your guilt by a further continuance in sin. What a fearful reflection will it be at a future period, that you lived but to " add sin to sin," and to " treasure up wrath against the day of wrath !" If you live to repent of it, what anguish of mind will you suffer, ere you obtain forgiveness ! And, if you live not to repent of it, what infinitely sorer anguish will you sustain to all eternity ! And why should you defer the work to which God is calling you? Suppose ye that it is a state of melancholy, that shall embitter the whole remainder of your days ? No : " The work of righteousness is peace : and the effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance for everu." Indeed you all know, in your hearts, that " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom :" and that " in keep- ing of God's commandments there is great reward V]
11 Isai. xxxii. 17. x Ps. xix. 11.
John ix. 6, 7. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent J. He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
THERE is reason to think that all the miracles of our Lord were intended as emblems of the spiritual blessings which he came to bestow. But in inter- preting Scripture it is better to assign to every passage a sense which is clear and determinate, than to wander into the regions of conjecture. In some places however the mystical meaning is pointed out by the inspired writers themselves ; and then we may follow them without doubt or fear. Such is the case with respect to the miracle before us ; in considering which it will be proper to notice,
I. The historical fact —
[The Disciples seeing a man that had been blind from his birth, inquired of our Lord whether the sins of his parents, or any sins of his own in a former state of existence a, had been
a It should seem that the Pythagorean notion of the transmigra- tion of souls, prevailed among the Jews of that day. VOL. XIII. 1 I