This
fact only proves, in my mind, the intimate connection between the
human and the divine. Christianity never claimed to introduce a
brand-new system of morality.

Referring to another matter, Christ said: "Think not that I am come
to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but
to fulfill." And so the fulness and perfection of His own system
could not fail to embrace many principles that had already appeared
in heathen morality. But in the hands of our Savior they became
broader and brighter and fuller of power and meaning.

Will these non-Christian religions bear the test? Stoicism was
perhaps the noblest of the Greek philosophies, but it rapidly
developed into utter cynicism, and culminated in the asserted
impossibility of attaining to virtue. Epicureanism started out
fairly well, but its founder was not dead before it earned for
itself the opprobrious epithet that it was a doctrine worthy only of
swine. Look at Buddhism, with its filthy ceremonies and cruel
tortures. All these systems exhibit a conflict between theory and
practice. They failed in their object, because they approached the
difficulty on the wrong side. They trimmed away at the branch, not
recognizing that the tree was rotten at heart.

Christianity alone will stand the test of raising man out of the
pit. And how does it propose to do it? Not by minimizing the danger
and need. It says: "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart
faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no
soundness in it; but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores." It
demands as _the first necessity_ a new birth, regeneration by the
Holy Spirit. "Ye must be born again." It does not place
sanctification before justification, but having first imparted life
from above, it throws around the redeemed sinner the love of Christ
and the fellowship and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

A converted Chinaman once said: "I was down in a deep pit, half sunk
in the mire, crying for some one to help me out. As I looked up I
saw a venerable, grayhaired man looking down at me.

"'My son,' he said, 'this is a dreadful place.'

'Yes,' I answered, 'I fell into it; can't you help me out?'

'My son,' was his reply, 'I am Confucius. If you had read my books
and followed what they taught, you would never have been here.'

'Yes, father,' I said, 'but can't you help me out?'

As I looked he was gone. Soon I saw another form approaching, and
another man bent ov