Christianity, No Fable 373 (which men know better than believe) ; or, if a reality, so trifling a matter that God will overlook it (which men in their best moments doubt) ; and certainly not by asking men to save themselves (which they soon discover they cannot do) ; but by first setting forth sin in all its moral loathsomeness and legal guiltiness, and then announcing that God Himself had provided a lamb for a burnt-offering, even His own Son, upon whom He has laid the iniquity of us all, and that now He is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses. b. A second thing proposed by Christianity is to make men holy, to free them from the love and practice of sin, to conform them in the love and practice of truth and righteous ness; and this it seeks to do by giving man a new heart and a right spirit, by changing his nature, implanting in it holy prin ciples and putting it under the government of the.divine and eternal spirit. That the means are adequate has been proved by the ex perience of the past nineteen centuries, in which millions of human souls have been translated out of darkness into light and turned from the service of Satan to the service of the Living God. And what is more, other methods have been tried without effecting any permanent transformation of either hearts or lives. Magical incantations, meaningless muim meries, laborious ceremonies, painful penances, legislations, education, philanthropy, have in turn been resorted to, but in vain. Never once has the Gospel method been fairly tried and proved inefficient. c. A third thing Christianity engages to do, is to confer on those who accept it a blessed immortality—to support them when they come .to die, to cheer them with the prospect of a happy existence while their bodies are in the grave, to bring those bodies forth again and in the end to bestow on their whole personality a glorious unending life beneath a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness..
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker