that is, the fitness of the Gospel for all men. The Gospel, and the Gospel alone, is healing and restoration. No idea is comparable with this in importance to man. There is, indeed, a seeming indifference to religious snbiects among men; but he who looks narrowly into things will clearly see that of all subjects that appeal to men and influence them, religion, all over the globe, is the deepest, most powerful, most absorbing. But all the other anxieties of men upon this subject have been fruitless. At length the redemption of Jesus is announced to the nations; and at once all the needs and the painful necessities of the case are met.
This exclusive claim of the Gospel to be the medicine for the deep and otherwise incurable diseases of the soul is visible in two distinct points, which I will briefly point out:
(a) We know from experience and from observation that the disease which is destroying souls is one; and, as all men are alike in constitution, it follows that the cure must be one which will affect all alike. Now, many of the ills of men are local; they pertain to particular nations, zones, and hemispheres, and hence the cures of certain ailments in one quarter could not benefit men with dissimilar ailments in other quarters of the globe. Now, the peculiarity of the Gospel is, that the remedy for the great evil which underlies all human woe is both fitted and designed for all men. It is world-wide in its adaptedness, and universal in its efficacy.
If you go to China, the disease which is the fruitful source of all her multiplied miseries—social, civil,
