great
gospel principles. For these he seeks a place of lodgment everywhere. The
old tables of the law contained but one commandment that was not
prohibitory. Every line portrayed a crime, with a law standing on guard
beside it, and warning men away with its "Thou shalt not!" Christ asserts
the authority of the law; but in the new table it is seen beckoning toward
the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart."
His instructions to his disciples do not so much concern the things which
they are to avoid, as they tend to fix upon their minds right conceptions
of his character and mission. So, I repeat, Christ's work is less a
crusade against evil, than an assertion of good by precept and example as
the surest means in the end of removing evil. Look, too, at Paul at
Athens, surrounded by heathen temples, statues and altars. He does not
proceed to demonstrate to the curious multitude that the philosophies of
Zeno or Epicurus are wrong; or that the worship of Hermes or Athene is
absurd. He throws out at once, bold and stern as a mountain headland, the
assertion of the Divine unity, and follows it up with the doctrines of
salvation through Christ, the resurrection, and the final judgment. In a
few bold strokes he delineates to the astonished skeptics some salient
points of natural and revealed religion, and then leaves the truth to
germinate and crowd out the evil in its own way and time.

There is indeed a sublimity in this invincible faith in the power of truth
exhibited by the Son of Man. In the calmness with which he moves amid the
moral ruin that encompasses him, without that anxious haste, and longing
for immediate results, which characterize so many modern reformers. The
world would have expected a direct and tremendous onslaught upon evil. It
would have said that the dropping of a seed of positive truth here and
there, would never result in anything. Christ knew better. He knew the
latent power of truth; its inherent capability of growth; and he knew that
wherever it should find a lodgment, it would grow; and wherever it should
grow, it would shake down from its branches, like the mighty tree of the
tropics, the germs of a thousand growths like itself. Now it is this very
faith in the power of gospel truth, as the most effective destroyer of
evil, prompting to put the good boldly into the evil to leaven it, which
is sorely needed in the moral movements of the age. Bring the subject of
amusements t