Article August 19, 1916 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from John A. Hutton, Joseph Fort Newton, Henry Kingman

[Rev. John A. Hutton, D.D., in The Christian World]

Christ came to contradict the notion that what one has done in the past must of necessity entangle him forever and hold him in its thrall. He came to give freedom to those that were bound. He came to say that it was possible, and to make it possible, for every one, in spite of any kind of previous history, to break away from its thraldom and to rise above even its shadows. He came to seek and to save that which was lost—lost, that is, according to the wisdom and opinion of the world. He came in order to lift the soul, by one sheer dead lift, clean out of its old surroundings,—out of the gloom and the distress and the fatal drift in which the souls of men go down. That surely is the gospel on its practical side, as it bears upon you and me.

It is possible to begin again. By the mercy of God no one is quite undone. Just in front of you, so to speak, there is buried this gem of infinite value. I cannot gather it for you. It is a gem which every one must find for himself or herself. There is a power, I mean, which every one may find with Christ in God, and by it he may step out today with unsoiled feet upon a fresh, new world. Perhaps that is the supreme truth. It is possible in this life of ours—which lives and moves and has its being in God—for one who has sinned even grievously to make a clean break with his past, to die to his sin, to go down into the cold waters of moral pain, to go down into a very grave and be alone—and then to rise, fresh and clean and new-born, raised by the hands of Christ.

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