an intellectual truth, but it is a process of conviction of error in
respect to great moral and religious truth, and of manifestation of
the truths in regard to which the error and the sin have been
committed. So we have here the triple division of the great work
which the divine Spirit does, through Christian men and women, in the
world.

'He shall convict the world of sin.' The outstanding first
characteristic of the whole Gospel message is the new gravity which
it attaches to the fact of sin, the deeper meaning which it gives to
the word, and the larger scope which it shows its blighting
influences to have had in humanity. Apart from the conviction of sin
by the Spirit using the word proclaimed by disciples, the world has
scarcely a notion of what sin is, its inwardness, its universality,
the awfulness of it as a fact affecting man's whole being and all his
relations to God. All these conceptions are especially the product of
Christian truth. Without it, what does the world know about the
poison of sin? And what does it care about the poison until the
conviction has been driven home to the reluctant consciousness of
mankind by the Spirit wielding the word? This conviction comes first
in the divine order. I do not say that the process of turning a man
of the world into a member of Christ's Church always begins, as a
matter of fact, with the conviction of sin. I believe it most
generally does so; but without insisting upon a pedantic adherence to
a sequence, and without saying a word about the depth and intensity
of such a conviction, I am here to assert that a Christianity which
is not based upon the conviction of sin is an impotent Christianity,
and will be of very little use to the men who profess it, and will
have no power to propagate itself in the world. Everything in our
conception of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of His work for us