tasted of His mercy, we who know the might of His love, the
converting and renewing power of His Spirit--how dare we doubt but
that He WILL take away the sins of the world? Ay; step by step,
nation by nation, year by year, the Lord shall conquer; love, and
justice, and wisdom shall spread and grow; for He must reign till He
has put all enemies under His feet. He has promised to take away the
sins of the world, and He is God, and cannot lie. There is the
Christian's hope: let him leave infidels to say "The world always
was bad, and it must remain so to the end;" the Christian ought to be
able to answer, "The world was bad, and is bad; but for that very
reason it will NOT remain so to the end: for the Lord and king of
the earth is boundless love, justice, goodness itself, and He will
thoroughly purge His floor, and cast out of His kingdom all things
that offend, and make in His good time the kingdoms of this world,
the kingdoms of God and of His Christ."

"Ah but," someone may say, "that, if it ever happens at all, will not
happen till we are dead, and what part or lot shall WE have in it? we
who die in the midst of all this sin, and injustice, and distress?"
There again the Bible gives us hope: "I believe," says the Creed,
"in the resurrection of the flesh." The Bible teaches us to believe,
that we, each of us, as human beings, men and women, shall have a
share in that glorious day; not merely as ghosts, and disembodied
spirits--of which the Bible, thanks be to God, says little or
nothing, but as real live human beings, with new bodies of our own,
on a new earth, under a new heaven. "Therefore," says David, "my
flesh shall rest in hope;" not merely my soul, my ghost, but my
flesh. For the Lord, who not only died, but rose again with His
body, shall raise our bodies, according to the mighty working by
which He subdues all things to Himself; and then the whole manhood of