never
a man is reconciled with the law of purity he is so far reconciled with
a God of purity. When men have lifted themselves to that point that
they recognize that they are the children of God, the kingdom of God has
begun within them.

Although the spirit and practice of the gospel will develop charities,
will develop physical comfort, will feed men, will heal men, will
provide for their physical needs, yet the primary and fundamental result
of the gospel is to develop man himself, not merely to relieve his want
on an occasion. It does that as a matter of course, but that is scarcely
the first letter of the alphabet. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and
his righteousness, and all these things [food and raiment] shall be
added unto you." The way to relieve a man is to develop him so that he
will need no relief, or to raise higher and higher the character of the
help that he demands.

In testing Christianity, then, I remark first that it is to be tested
not by creeds, but by conduct. The evidence of the gospel, the reality
of the gospel that is preached in schools or churches, is to be found in
the spirit that is developed by it, not in the technical creeds that men
have constructed out of it. The biography of men who have died might be
hung up in their sepulchres; but you could not tell what kind of a man
this one had been, just by reading his life there--while he lay dead in
dust before you. There are thousands of churches that have a creed of
Christianity hung up in them, but the church itself is a sepulchre full
of dead men's bones; and indeed, many churches in modern times are
gnawing the bones of their ancestors, and doing almost nothing else.

The gospel, changed from a spirit of humanity into a philosophical
system of doctrine, is perverted. It is not the gospel. The great heresy
in the world of religion is a cold heart, not a luminous head. It is not
that intelligence is of no use in religion. By no means. Neither would
we wage a crusade against philosophical systems of moral truth. But
where the active sympathy and humanity of loving hearts for living men,
and for men in the ratio in which they are low, is laid aside or
diminished to a minimum, and in its place is a well-elaborated
philosophical system of moral truths, hewn and jointed,--the gospel is
gone. If you go along the sea-shores, you will often find the shells of
fish--the fish dead and gone, the shells left. And if you go along the
shores of ecc