The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-01-20
os ANGELES, Cal, January 18-In

T os ANGELES, Cal, January 1S.-In
 this sermon the preacher shows - how even our heaviest burdens ani afflictions may be transformed into bless ings through divine mercy and power to those who ask in faith. The text is John K. 3. That the works of God should be made manifest in him"
 There is something very consolatory to me in the fact that the character sketches of the Old and New Testa- ments do not deal entirely with the Enochs and the Joshuas and the Jo- sephs. These men, to be frank are too good for me to feel fellowship with them. read and reread the records of their lives, and I do not find one flaw in them. But when l find God offering his mercy and pardon to a Jacob and D David and Peter and doubung Thomas I say to myself "Ah, if God can cleanse such men of their sins, I know he can and will cleanse me Of my sins if 1 only throw myself upon his mercy and his love" Now, our Lords disciples had the same doubts and the same failings in their nature as We have Though they lived very close to Jesus in a physical sense, they were just as far from him in spir- itual sense as some of us are. The same problems and difficulties which are worrying us were worrying them. The same questions were being discussed by them And here today we find one of the greatest of all modern quektions being brought by them to Christ for settlement
 l Jesus was one day going out of the 1 temple accompanied by his friends | There by one of the gates stood young man blind from his birth. He was beggar. He had that mute ap- peal of sghtless eyeballs so pathetic to look at. He stood there as hundreds | of blind mendcants now stand in tho east, begging for money with the words. "Backsheesh. Backsheesh! For tie love of God, give me backsheesh!' think that the disciples as they were walking along had their heads together talking earnestly upon some great gospel 1 theme. They wanted Christ to explain for them some knotty questions of the ology which we all want him to do. Among these problems was probably that ! of suffering. Was it true as so many Jews believed, that affliction was sent ds punishment for sin? We know from the book of Job that such idea Was prevalent but was it true? There wero some facts that contradicted the the | ory Some men were undoubtedly good, yet were great sufferers. This 1 difficulty was so obvious that another | theory had sprung up. There were some who said, Perhaps the sufferer is good, and his suffering may be the result of Lae | sin of his ancestors As they talked | they noticed the conspicuous beggar at the temple gate, and they made his case 1 the subject of q question to their Mas ter. Why was this man blind? Was | a ic1 sin or for some sin committed by his 1 parents? That is a question which Eas | long been a mystery, and perhaps you and l have discussed 1t a hundred times. What did Jesus say? Why, he said, l "Neither hath this man snned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him"
 The Explanation.
 Have you grasped the full signfl- | canoe of this answer? If you do you have the key to some of the mysteries 1 of your own life. God has sent to you that lung trouble, or that dullness of hearing, or that dimness of eyesight, or that family trouble, or that financial distress, not on account of your sins or on account of your parents sins, but that Gods mercy and power might be made manifest to all the world in your life. Do you believe that? Well, if not, l want to plead with you to be- lieve it. Therefore let us try and nnd out how the works of God can be made manifest in your present physical, men tai and spiritual troubles, as they were made manifest in the miraculous cure of the young man of the east who was | born blind and who had his eyesisht given to him when he obeyed the com mands of the Lord Jesus Christ.
 When the blind mans eyes were opened Christ performed miracle | VI no been able to do. He was not an oculist who was cutting away cataract which l as a dark curtain, had been dropped over the eyeball of an old man. He was not charlatan who was making salve out of the mud to assuage the inflammation of the ophthalmic nerves. But he was q miracle worker who could give hearing to | a deaf and dumb man who had been born without any eardrum, without any sounding board to catch the waves of sound as they came surgng into the ivory vestibu1es of the ear. In other words, Christ was giving to this young man of the east his eyesight when there was no visual organ there, when the ocular nerves were gone. The wofh Christ was doing for that young mans eyes was exactly what he could do If he put a new leg upon your body after your leg had been crushed in a railroad acci- dent and amputated by the surgeons knife. Never since the world was ere ated up to the time of Jesus had any man ever received his sight after he had been born blind. This miracle was q test case, Christ was practically saying, If I can give eyesight to this afflicted one I can do everything and anything, ye of little faith"
 A Test Case.
 | The other day l saw picture of the new gallery of one of the largest audi | ,ei,, f.ff Ind txrffl T. hundreds of bags of sand and Hmt, They were put there to test the strength of the gallery, as every railroad bridge is tested before a passenger train is pl- lowed to go over it. Those sand bags were practically saying, "If this gallery can hold up my weight it can hold up the bodies of hundreds of people who shall be crowded into it." So Christ by curing the eyesght of one born blind was proving to the world that his super