"For sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains."

Oh, my friends, the Gospel is not a syllogism; It is not casuistry, it
is not polemics, or the science of squabble. It is blood-red fact; it
is warm-hearted invitation; it is leaping, bounding, flying good news;
it is efflorescent with all light; it is rubescent with all glow; it
is arborescent with all sweet shade. I have seen the sun rise on Mount
Washington, and from the Tip-top House; but there was no beauty in
that compared with the day-spring from on high when Christ gives light
to a soul. I have heard Parepa sing; but there was no music in that
compared with the voice of Christ when He said: "Thy sins are forgiven
thee; go in peace." Good news! Let every one cut down a branch of this
tree of life and wave it. Let him throw it down and kindle it. Let all
the way from Mount Zalmon to Shechem be filled with the tossing joy.
Good news! This bonfire of the Gospel shall consume the last temple of
sin, and will illumine the sky with apocalyptic joy that Jesus Christ
came into the world to save sinners. Any new plan that makes a man
quit his sin, and that prostrates a wrong, I am as much in favor of as
though all the doctors, and the bishops, and the archbishops, and the
synods, and the academical gownsmen of Christianity sanctioned it. The
temple of Berith must come down, and I do not care how it comes.

Still further, I learn from this subject the power of example. If
Abimelech had sat down on the grass and told his men to go and get the
boughs, and go out to the battle, they would never have gone at all,
or, if they had, it would have been without any spirit or effective
result; but when Abimelech goes with his own ax and hews down a
branch, and with Abimelech's arm puts it on Abimelech's shoulder, and
marches on--then, my text says, all the people did the same. How