religions, and political—is sin. If you come to Africa, you find the fruitful source of her heterogeneous ills and sufferings is sin. If you visit the islands of the sea, sin there is the parent of pains and agonies. If you turn to India, sin, among her many millions of idolaters, is the desolator. And so, if you traverse the provinces of enlightenment, whether in Europe or America, everywhere you will see the deadly spots of the same loathsome leprosy, which from the infant days of the world has been eating out the vitals of humanity.
Now, whatever may be the development of this virus, if you do not attack it itself your labor is in vain. You may cure this evil; you may get rid of that ailment; you may lop off this withered limb; and cut off that cancered excrescence; and yet, after all, if you do not go directly to the seat of the disease which is ruining man, your labor is vain and profitless.
Sin in the heart, that is, selfishness, alienation from God, perfect absorption in self, that is the disease in every man and nation on earth which must be cured; and whatever other alterations, changes, and apparent good may be done, if that is not effected, then nothing has been done. And that the Gospel alone can do. It can do it anywhere and everywhere. Its power is not confined nor limited. It is fitted to men of every clime and nation. It is the only remedy, the only agency on earth, which has such power and ability. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only physician of souls who stands up amid the million masses of men, capable of turning and touching any one of the crowd surrounding, and by touching curing, and
