of the
gutter, and he brushes the man's clothes a bit, and his hair, and
sprinkles the latest-labelled cologne-water over him, and pats him on
the shoulder, and says, "Now, you feel better, my man, don't you?" And
the man sniffs the perfume, and is quite sure he does. _But he is still
in the gutter._

There seems to be an increasing amount of this sort of thing over in my
neighbourhood. How is it in your corner of the planet? There's an
intense stress on environment; that means the _outside_ of things.
Better sanitation, improved housing, purer milk supply, and segregation
of vice which seems to mean putting some of the viler smelling slime of
the gutter, the slimer slime, all over in one guttered section by
itself. But there can be no health there. It's a _change of location_
that is needed!

The wondrous Jesus-plan is different. It holds things in poise. Grace
_and_ truth. Truth is Jesus stretching His hand up high, up to the limit
of arm's length, and saying, "Here is the standard, purity,
righteousness, utter honesty of heart and rigid purity of motive and
life. You _must_ reach this standard. It can't be lowered by the half
thickness of a paper-thin shaving. You must come to this standard. The
standard never comes down to you."

And the man in the gutter says, "I'll never reach it." And he is right.
_He_ never will--of himself, alone. Yet that's truth, true truth. "A
hopeless case" you say; "utter impractical idealizing! Case ruled out of
court." Just wait, that's only half the case, and not the warm half
either.

Grace is Jesus going down into the gutter, the gutterest gutter, and
taking the man by his outstretching hand, and _lifting_ him _clean up_
out of the gutter, up, and up, _till the man reaches the standard_, and
is never content till he does. That was a tremendous going down, and a
yet more tremendous lifting up. Jesus broke His heart and lost His life
in the going down.

But out from the broken heart came running the blood that proved both
cleansing and a salve. And out of the grave of that lost life came a new
life that proved an incentive, and a tremendous dynamic. The blood
cleanseth the _inside_ of the man in the gutter, and heals his sores,
restores his sight and hearing and sensitiveness of touch. The new life
put inside the man makes him rise up and _walk determinedly_ out of the
gutter to a _new location_. He is a new man, with a new inside, in a new
location. That threefold cord is ahead