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 [pg 048] 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.
The point for us to note is this: Our Lord does not annihilate evil. He does not regard it as an outlawed intruder who had eluded God's notice, [pg 049] and who, as soon as he is discovered, is to be expelled from the universe at once. His Father has suffered evil to be, and He, Christ, follows in His Father's ways: evil may still do its work, only not on men. This evil influence, we must observe, is something external to the man; it would seem to belong to an order of existences, engaged in working ill as their congenial business; whispering bad counsel, something in the way that God's Spirit whispers good, only, of course, not in such deep authoritative tones; and, in these cases of possession, it masters the whole being of the sufferer. Why this was allowed to be, is of course a mystery, but yet it is hardly a greater mystery than why evil in its other forms should be allowed to exist, and without evil in some shape, as we have seen, this earth would be a very imperfect exercise-ground for mankind.
To represent this case to our minds, let us imagine some malignant “germ” that has caused a plague amongst men, and which in time takes a slightly different form, so that it is no longer adapted to human beings, but finds its prey in cattle instead. Then the plague among men is exchanged for a murrain among cattle, which, as a matter of fact, has been known to happen: this answers to the allowing the dæmon to go to the swine. Evil is not forcibly exterminated, but it is transferred from man to the lower animals.
So our Lord is gentle even with the powers of [pg 050] evil. They had their function, or they would not have been there, and they were not to be crushed out of existence before the time.
If it be, as I have argued, that evil had a function in the world, then we can see why it could not be removed by a universal decree. But a single act of relief might be admissible in order to testify to the presence of an exceptional power; this would not engender in people the habit of helplessly throwing themselves upon God. For instance, Christ cures the son of the centurion merely by speaking the word, but if He had abolished all fevers by one decree, this would have been to disorganise the existing order in the universe. A King going on a royal progress relieves the misery that comes in his way; his own kindliness, his royal dignity, and the need of impressing on the people that their King delights in doing good, and can do it, require him so to do. But a regal donation for the relief of all distress in the kingdom would turn it into a nation of paupers. So our Lord bestows His bounty on those who fall in His way.
He who asks, Why did not Christ suppress evil? may naturally ask also, Why did not Christ sweep away all human error as to the relations of God with man? And why did He not so vouch for the authenticity of His communication that any doubt about it should be impossible? Now we believe, that God has revealed Himself to man, [pg 051] and yet has left men in some degree free as to what they will think about Him, and as fully at liberty to examine the credentials of those who have claimed to be His messengers, and to judge of their authenticity, as they would be in a purely human matter.