Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 218, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1915 — TO HEM. THE SOUL [ARTICLE]

TO HEM. THE SOUL

Impossible to Misunderstand the Purpose for Which Jesus Came to Earth. After all, supreme purpose was to bo a healer of souls. Had the Pharisees understood that he was a healer, they would not have been surprised to find him among publicans and sinners. But they judged Jesus by themselves. They expected him ,to have the same prejudices, the same narrowness and. the same contempt for the socially and morally degraded. Men are apt to make their own feel* Ings the standard of moral judgment. We common people have eternal reasons for thankfulness that Jesus Christ did not come as a priest, or a philosopher, with the proud, narrow contempt often characteristic of those who bear these titles; but that he came as a healer of souls, with broad, warm sympathies and with an abiding faith in all classes of men. This exposed him to the censure of his contemporaries, but has earned for him the gratitude and love of all later ages. That Christ came into the world as a healer of souls has many lessons for us. It means, in the first place, that Christianity is before all things a religion of redemption. Its proper vocation is to lift the low, to raise the fallen, to teach the ignorant the way of life, to set free those bound by superstition, to cleanse the moral leper and to heal those who are spiritually sick.

There is in the natural heart of man a terrible selfishness and cruelty which causes men to thrust the weak to the wall, and often to trample savagely on the fallen. Hounds bite their sick brother in the kennel, and the wolves tear the wounded one of the pack. Among savage tribes the aged, the sick and the injured were often killed or left to die. In polished Greece and Imperial Rome children were exposed and slaves were mercilessly tortured. Christ taught the world that this cruelty and hardness of heart were earthly and devilish. He taught us once and for all the sacredness, not only of fine gifts and brilliant intellects, but the sacredness of man as man. He saw the soul of beauty in things ugly, and the possible goodness in things evil.

Few That Are Whole. “They that are whole need not a physician,” said Jesus. Are there any whole? We find many people who, like the Pharisees, consider themselves whole and certainly not in need of a physician. Perhaps you and I count ourselves among the number who need no help, who are perfectly satisfied with our own morality. But the day will come when we stand revealed to our own sight in all our unworthiness, and we realize that the cancer of sin has been eating at our very heart. Some day we will understand what Christ told the Pharisees, that God will have mercy and not sacrifice.

Since Christ’s supreme purpose in coming was to heal souls, then it follows that his place was among the publicans and sinners. They sneered at him that day because he sat down at table in Matthew’s house with those who were socially ostracized and morally tainted. But If the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a saving gospel, then it must go where It finds those who need it the most When the church forgets that, it ceases to be the true church of the Good Physician. There Is some truth in the reproach which has been directed at the church at different times, that It has catered to the well and the well to do. But I believe that that time has to a great extent passed, and that of late years the church has been entering into a fuller appreciation of the spirit of the Master who ministered unto the world’s leprosy, who healed the lame, the halt and the blind spiritually as well as physically, and who preached the Gospel unto the poor.

Love Always First. In this story of the Good Physician there is a great comfort for us all. Christ’s way with sinners was to love them and to believe in their recoverability. He went among the outcasts and healed them, and it should be to us an object lesson in the possibility of a restored humanity. When we preach the Gospel to men, we thereby announce our faith in the Divine something in them which will respond to the Divine message which we bring them. That is why Christianity is always optimistic, and that is why the church should always be optmistic, having an abiding faith in the progress and power of the Gospel. Jesus said, "Lo, I am with you alway,” and is his love any less than when he walked the earth, and is his power any less than when he healed the sinners of Palestine? "Cleanse thou me from secret faults,” was the cry of David of old. He knew the heart of man, and he knew his own heart. ; Thls rayer finds an echo in every life. We are all conscious of sins which are hidden from the world, and some of which are almost hidden from ourselves. We are conscious of the wild beast within, which some day, we fear, will break forth. Our great sins have their secret antecedents. The dark tragedies of life are not isolated happenings. They are the outcome* of the deadly diseases of sin which has been secretly gnawing at our characters. Well may we go to the Good Physician and plead with him for help, and let us remember -that he never fails in his treatment He is able to save, even to the uttermost