how we can
help the man out of his difficulties, than with the question how he got
himself into them. The one question may indeed be involved in the other,
but all suffering is, in the first place, a field in which the works of
God may be exhibited. Wherever suffering has come from, there can be no
manner of doubt that it calls out all that is best in human
nature--sympathy, self-denial, gentleness, compassion, forgiveness of
spirit, patient forbearance, all that is most Divine in man. To seek for
the cause of suffering in order to blame and exonerate ourselves from
all responsibility and claim on our pity and charity is one thing, quite
another to inquire into the cause for the sake of more effectually
dealing with the effect. No matter what has caused the suffering, here
certainly it is always with us, and what we have to do with it is to
find in it material and opportunity for a work of God. To rid the world
of evil, of wretchedness, lonely sorrow, destitution, and disease is, if
anything, the work of God; if God is doing anything He is carrying the
world on towards perfection, and if the world is ever to be perfect it
must be purged from agony and wretchedness, irrespective of where these
come from. Our duty then, if we would be fellow-workers with God in what
is real and abiding, is plain.

To the work of healing the blind man Jesus at once applies Himself.
While the lifted stones were yet in His pursuers hands He paused to
express His Father's love. He must, He says, work the works of Him who
sent Him. He represented the Father not mechanically, not by getting
well off by rote the task His Father had set Him, not by a studied
imitation, but by being Himself of one mind with the Father, by loving
that blind man just as the Father loved him, and by doing for him just
what the Father would have done for him. We do the works of God when in
our measure we do the same, becoming eyes to the blind, feet to the
lame, help any way to the helpless. We cannot lay our hand on the
diseased and heal them; we cannot give sight to the blind and make a man
thus feel, this is God's power reaching to me; this is God stooping to
me and caring for my infirmity; but we can cause men to feel that God is
thinking of them, and has sent help through us to them. If we will only
be humble enough to run the risk of failure, and of being held cheap, if
we will only in sincerity take by the hand those who are ill-off and
strive to better them, t