e no objection of his, retires
into his own interior.

If what was said in a former lecture about the distinctive difference
between the preaching of the Old Testament and that of the new be
considered, it will at once be recognised how vital is this aspect of
the matter. The prophets of the Old Testament, in common with the
thinkers of antiquity in general, thought of men in masses and
regarded the individual only as a fragment of a larger whole. But
Christ introduced an entirely new way of thinking. To Him the
individual was a whole in himself; beneath the habiliments of even the
humblest member of the human family there was hidden what was more
precious than the entire material world; and on the issues of every
life was suspended an immortal destiny. This faith may be said to
have made Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world; for He saw in the
lost children of men that which made Him live to seek them and die to
save them. And it is by this same faith and vision that anyone is
qualified to be a fellow-worker with Christ. No one will ever be able
to engage with any success in the work of human salvation who does not
see men to be infinitely the most interesting objects in the world,
and who does not stand in awe before the solemn destiny and the
sublime possibilities of the soul. It is by the growth and the glow of
this faith that the worth of all ministerial work is measured.

It is far easier, however, to acknowledge this view in the abstract
than to cherish it habitually towards the actual men and women of our
own sphere and our own vicinity. That man is the most interesting
object in the world; that the soul is precious; and that it is better
for a human being to lose the whole world than to miss his
destiny--these are now commonplaces, which everyone who bears the
Christian name will acknowledge. Yet in reality few live under their
power. Many a one who has paid the tribute of love and admiration to
the spectacle of Christ's compassion for the outcasts, and melted with
aesthetic emotion before a picture of the Woman taken in Adultery or
the Woman that was a Sinner, has never once attempted to save an
actual woman of the same kind in his own city, and would be utterly at
a loss if such a one, in an hour of remorse, were to throw herself on
his pity and protection. There is a great difference between a sinner
in a book or a picture and a sinner in the flesh. Multitudes in their
hearts believe that all the remarkabl