y the sins of the
world."

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW LIFE--INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL

The health department of a modern city is charged with a double duty: it
has to care for cases of disease, and it has to suggest and enforce laws
to keep the city sanitary. The former task--the treatment of
sickness--is much more widely recognized as the proper function of the
medical profession; the latter--the prevention of the causes of
illness--is a newer, but a more far-reaching, undertaking. When Pasteur
was carrying on his investigations into the origins of certain diseases,
most of the leading physicians and surgeons made light of his work: "How
should this chemist, who cannot treat the simplest case of sickness nor
perform the most trifling operation, have anything to contribute to
medical science?" But Pasteur's discovery of the part played by bacilli
not only altered profoundly the work of physicians and surgeons, but
opened up the larger task of preventive medicine.

The Gospel of Christ, in its endeavor to make and keep men whole, faces
a similarly double labor. It has its ministry of rescue and healing for
sinning men and women; it has its plan of spiritual health for society.
It comes to every man with its offer of rebirth into newness of life:
"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." It comes to society
with its offer of a regenesis, a paradise of love on earth. The life of
God enters our world by two paths--personally, through individuals whom
it recreates, and by whom it remakes society; socially, through a new
communal order which reshapes the men and women who live under it. The
New Testament speaks of both entrances of the Spirit of God into human
life: it pictures "_one_ born from above," and "the holy _city_ coming
down from God out of heaven." The two processes supplement each other.
Consecrated man and wife make their home Christian; a Christian home
renders the conversion of its children unnecessary; they know themselves
children of God as soon as they know themselves anything at all. Saved
souls save society, and a saved society saves souls.

Religion must always be personal; each must respond for himself to his
highest inspirations. A child may confuse the divine voice with that of
its parents, through whom the divine message comes; but a day arrives
when he learns that God speaks directly to him, perhaps differently from
the way in which his parents understand His voice, and he must listen
for h