eached and loved and restored by
that same innocent and holy soul.

The experience was constantly repeated in the early church. It was the
most striking of all those genuine "miracles"--the wonders of spiritual
creation and growth--which were the wealth of the Christian society.

At the most dark and depressing hour of that society; when in gaining
dominion it had lowered its purity, and before the barbarian invasion
the whole social fabric shook,--that same miracle of a divine love,
realized as a saving and transforming force, was wrought in the great
personality of Augustine, and inspired through him anew the life of the
church.

The intellectual vestment of this experience--the form under which the
crude thought of these men gave it body and substance--was the
Incarnation and the Atonement. Those doctrines have lasted through all
changes, even until this day, because of the pearl of truth cased in
their rough shells.

When now we try to express that truth in its simplicity--finding always
a great difficulty in putting in articulate words the deep things of
the spirit--we say that the man who sees and sorrows for and seeks to
escape from his wrong deed or habit may come into the consciousness
that he will escape,--may feel with a profound assurance that he is
upborne by some power of good which will save him and bless him. He is
recoverable; he is lovable; he is loved, and shall be saved. And the
way in which that consciousness is awakened is oftenest by the contact
of some soul which the sinner reverences as better than himself, which
knows his guilt and loves him in spite of it, and declares to him that
he shall live and recover. The minister of forgiveness may be a mother
or a wife; it may be the sincere priest speaking to the sincere
penitent; it may be Christ or Madonna; it may be the unnamed Power
whose token is the sunset, or the rainbow, or the voice within the
heart.

The especial limitation of Christianity at its birth was the
expectation of the speedy ending of the existing order. Hence an
indifference to such subjects, belonging to permanent human society, as
industry, government, knowledge, the control of the forces of nature.

As to all these, the limitations of Christianity hindered its progress;
as to each, the natural and secular world exercised an influence
unconfessed or striven against; as to each, the perception was reached
that it must be recognized by religion, until in our day th