live but for a moment, to be born, gasp and
die. Why some are born rich and others poor; some having
wealth only to corrupt, defile, deprave others therewith,
while meritorious poverty struggles and toils for human
betterment all unaided. Some gifted with mentality; others
pitiably lacking capacity. Some royal-souled from the first
naturally, others with brutal, criminal propensities from
beginning to end.

"The sins of the fathers visited upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation may in heredity account for
much, but I want to see through the mystery of a good father
at times having a bad son, as also of one showing genius and
splendid faculties--the offspring of parentage the reverse
of anything suggesting qualities contributive thereto. Then
as a clergyman, I have in my reading noted texts of Holy
Scripture, and come across passages in the writings of the
Fathers of the Early Church which seem to be root-thoughts,
or survivals of the old classic idea of re-incarnation.

"The prophet Jeremiah (1:5) writes, 'The word of the Lord
came unto me saying, before I formed thee, I knew thee, and
before thou wast born I sanctified thee and ordained thee a
prophet.'

"Does this mean that the Eternal-Uncreate chose, from foreknowledge of
what Jeremiah would be, the created Ego of His immaterialized servant
in heaven ere he clothed his soul with the mortal integument of flesh
in human birth--schooling him above for the part he had to play here
below as a prophet to dramatize in his life and teaching the will of
the Unseen? To the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda, whose
infirmity was the cruel experience of eight and thirty years, the
Founder of our religion said (_John 5:14._), 'Behold, thou art made
whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.' Was it
(fitting the punishment to the crime proportionately) some outrageous
sin as a boy, in the spring of years and days of his inexperienced
youth of bodily life, that brought on him such physical sorrow, which
youthful sin in its repetition would necessitate an even worse ill
than this nearly forty years of sore affliction? 'Who did sin, this
man or his parents, that he was born blind?' (_John 9:2._), was the
question of the disciples to Jesus. And our query is--Sinned _before_
he was born to deserve the penalty of being born blind?

"Then of John t