t we preach it ourselves?" said Desire, with inimitable
unwittingness. She was so utterly and wholly in the vision, that she
left her present self standing there on the rock with Christopher
Kirkbright, and never even thought of a reason why to blush before
him.

"I don't know why we shouldn't. In fact, we could not help it. It
would be _all_ gospel, wouldn't it? I know, at least, what I should
mean the whole thing to preach."

Saying this, he fell silent all at once.

"There is a great deal of wrong gospel preached in the world. If we
could only stop that, and begin again,--I think!" said Desire.
"Between the old, hopeless terrors and the modern smoothing away and
letting go, the real living help seems to have failed men. They
don't know where it is, or whether they need it, even."

"Yes, that is it," said Christopher Kirkbright, letting his silence
be broken through with the whole tide of his earnest, life-long,
pondered thought. "Men have put aside the old idea of the avenging
and punishing God, until they think they have no longer any need of
Christ. God is Love, they tell us; not recognizing that the Christ
_is_ that very Love of God. He will not cast us into hell, they say;
there _is_ no pit of burning torment. But they know there is
something that follows after sin; they know that God is not weak,
but abides by his own truth. Therefore, when they have made out God
to be Love, and blotted away the old, literal hell, they turn back
and declare pitilessly,--'There is _Law_. Law punishes; and Law is
inexorable. God Himself does not suspend or contradict his Law. You
have sinned; you must take the consequences.' Are you better off in
the clutch of that Law, than you were in the old hell? Isn't there
the same need as ever crying up from hearts of suffering men for a
Saviour? Of a side of God to be shown to them,--the forgiving side,
the restoring right hand? The power to grasp and curb his own law?
You must have Jesus again! You must have the Christ of God to help
you against the Law of God that you have put in the place of the
hell you will not believe in. Without a counteracting force, law
will run on forever. The impetus that sin started will bear on
downward, through the eternities! This is what threatens the sinner;
and you have sinned. Beyond and above and through the necessities
that He seems to have made, God reveals himself supreme in love, in
the Face of Jesus Christ. He comes in the very midst of the cl