be, to arrive at some thought which will take hold of this primary fact
of sin and uproot it; which will show how the world may be purged
of sin.

Slowly but inevitably we are moving to this great Thought. It is summed
up in one word: Redemption. The watchword of a century ago was
gravitation. It explained the poise of the universe by a great and
hitherto undiscovered law. The watchword of yesterday was evolution. It
explains progressive change: the mounting-up of life "through spires of
form." The forms of the universe are seen in a series which is in the
main ascendant, and in which the survivor is supreme. The watchword of
to-morrow is Redemption. The Thinker will some day live, who will make
that great word Redemption stand out in all its vast majesty and
significance. This, I take it, is the work of our new century.

Redemption is the explanation of the existence of man, of his present
progress, and his future destiny. It is the great mystery of joy in
which the race partakes; the spiritual culmination of all things
earthly; the forecast of eternal things yet to be.

Redemption is not a dogma; it is a life. Redemption is a perpetual and
ascendant moral growth. It marks a world-balm, a world-change. It is in
the spirit of man that it works, and not in his outer condition, or
external strivings. It is ultimately to root sin out of the world.

Through stormy sorrows and perpetual desolations comes the race to God.
Zion is the Whole of things--the encompassment of space, and time, and
endless years,--an environment of immortality and peace.

Virtue leads the race to Joy, and there is no byway to this height. The