must be the commonest. Such is the doctrine implied in every parable of our Lord; such, above all, is the doctrine of St. John, who does not report many parables, but who takes us into the inmost heart of them, and shows us the divine law which is involved in the use of them. I find an unspeakable blessing in following the order of St. John's narrative. It is the true order of human life. After we have listened to the divinest discourse, there is a sense of vacancy in the heart. We feel as if we were out of communion with the business and misery of the world,--as if the words had not proved themselves till they could be brought into collision and conflict with these. When we are in the midst of action, we want to know that it is not merely mechanical action,--that it is in conformity with some principle, and springs out of a principle. When Jesus has finished His discourse with the Jews, by assuming a name which lies beneath all discourse,--when they have finished their arguments by taking up stones to cast at Him,--He meets a man blind from his birth. He proceeds at once to do him good. But before He can enter upon that work, He must encounter a metaphysical doubt which has occurred to the fishermen who are walking with Him. A metaphysical doubt to fishermen! Yes; and if you go into the garrets and cellars of London, you will have metaphysical doubts presented to you by men immeasurably more ignorant than those fishermen were, even before Jesus called them; the very doubts which the schools are occupied with, only taking a living, practical form. Unless you can cause men not to be metaphysical beings--that is to say, unless you can take from them all which separates them from the beasts that perish--they must have these doubts. Thanks be to God, He awakens them! And thanks be to God, He, and not priests and doctors, must satisfy them for every creature whom He has made in His image! The doubt which troubled the disciples is one that has exercised all generations--none more than our own. '_Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?_' 'He came into the world under this curse. Was it for some sin he committed in another world, in some older state of existence? or is this an illustration of the doctrine, asserted in the second commandment? Are the sins of the father and mother visited on the child?' The former hypothesis has always connected itself closely with the sense of immortality in man. 'Am I merely to be hereafter? Does not the future imply a past? Do not shadows of that past pursue me? Can I interpret the facts of memory if I deny its existence?' The second doctrine is not more asserted in the law than it is justified by experience. The facts from which it is deduced belong to physiology as much at least as to theology. Every one who thinks of hereditary sickness and insanity confesses them and trembles.