Here the disciples take it for granted, that the blindness was a punishment for sin, either on the part of the man or his parents. It is our Lord’s practice—and a practice so uniform that we may call it a Law of proceeding—not to enter into controversy about wide-spread mistaken views on merely _speculative_ subjects: He usually gives a hint, and leaves it to work in the hearer’s mind. Our Lord’s answer in this case means, _not_, of course, that the man and his parents had never committed sin, but that the blindness was not the result of that sin; and He passes rapidly on to state His view of one purpose answered by this infliction. In His few words of answer our Lord lets fall one of those hints, _seed thoughts_, as I have called them, which lie so thickly in the Gospels. Our Lord tells us, that the works of God were to be made manifest by this man’s infirmity. A light is thrown by these words on one of the “uses of adversity.” Suffering gives room for moral goodness to come into play. The world is full of instances easy enough to note. Does not a sick child in a family educate all around it to tenderness and self-denial? What more touching lesson in patience can be given than the sight of the little sufferer, grieved at nothing so much as the trouble it causes, making the most of every alleviation, grateful beyond measure for every look or word of love. Rough brothers learn forbearance and gentleness; and to all the household it becomes natural to think of something else before, or at least beside, themselves. Wordsworth tells us of a half-witted boy whose helplessness and simplicity fostered a spirit of kindliness in all the poor of the village, and taught them to respect affliction. Again in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we are taught how there is “a soul of goodness in things evil.” The wickedness of the prodigal is made a means of revealing to him and to all the bystanders the Divine beauty and efficacy of forgiving love. We will now(9) turn to the history of the cure of the Dæmoniac in the country of the Gadarenes. I take the history in what seems to me the plain literal sense, and I must suppose that our Lord recognised some real evil existence, which had possessed itself of the man, and which, by its presence in him, had unhinged his whole mental or nervous organisation. This existence is separable from him, but it requires, it would seem, some body to inhabit and to work upon. The dæmon begs not to be suppressed or annihilated, and our Lord grants his petition and lets him go among the swine. He saves the _man_—what other evils this dæmon may work in the world, so that he lets men go, is no concern of His. The Son of Man is concerned only with lives and souls—not with property in any way.