There is an old superstition that lightning turned whatever it struck
towards the point from which the flash came, so that a tree with its
thousand leaves had each of them pointed to that quarter in the
heavens where the blaze had been.

And so Christ, when He flings out the beneficent flash that slays
only our evil, and vitalises ourselves, turns us to Him, and away
from our transgressions. 'Turn us, O Christ, and we shall be turned.'

Ah, brethren! that is the blessing that we need most, for
'iniquities' are universal; and so long as man is bound to his sin it
will embitter all sweetnesses, and neutralise every blessing. It is
not culture, valuable as that is in many ways, that will avail to
stanch man's deepest wounds. It is not a new social order that will
still the discontent and the misery of humanity. You may adopt
collective economic and social arrangements, and divide property out
as it pleases you. But as long as man continues selfish he will
continue sinful, and as long as he continues sinful _any_ social
order will be pregnant with sorrow, 'and when it is finished it will
bring forth death.' You have to go deeper down than all that, down as
deep as this Apostle goes in this sermon of his, and recognise that
Christ's prime blessing is the turning of men from their iniquities,
and that only after that has been done will other good come.

How shallow, by the side of that conception, do modern notions of
Jesus as the great social Reformer look! These are true, but they
want their basis, and their basis lies only here, that He is the
Redeemer of individuals from their sins. There were people in
Christ's lifetime who were all untouched by His teachings, but when
they found that He gave bread miraculously they said, 'This is of a