The Heart

The heart of Christ's work for the world is deliverance from sin . That is what man needs most . There are plenty of other remedies offered for the world's ills - culture ,art , new political and social arrangements , progress of science and the like . God forbid that I should say a word to depreciate them , but I tell you , and let your conscience tell you , that the disease goes deeper than those things can cure . The Bible diagnosis the disease grimly and gravely , because it knows it can cure it . There is only one Man that pretended He could deal with that , and that is Jesus Christ . And it took Him all His power to deal with it , but He did it ! And there is only one way in which He could deal with it , and that was by dying for it , and He did it !So He has conquered . "Canst thou draw Leviathan with a hook ?" When you can lead a crocodile out of the Nile with a bit of silk thread round his neck , you will be able to overcome the plague of the world , and that of your own heart , with anything short of the great sacrifice made by Jesus Christ . The one thing the world wants is the blessing He alone can it , and that blessing is deliverance from sin . No man will understand Christ's gospel unless he begins there . I believe that most of the mistaken and partial views of Christian truth lies here , that people have not got into their hearts and consciences a sense of their own sinfulness . And so you get a tepid , self -sufficient and superficial Christianity ; and you get ceremonials , and high and dry morality , masquerading under the guise of religion . But if once there came a wholesome , living consciencenessof what is meant when men say "We are sinners "all such mutilated Christianity would crumble because it would be felt to be all inadequate to the needs of the conscience . Alexander Maclaren