ns are forgiven." Once when he was in a Pharisee's house a
woman in the city, who was a sinner, washed his feet with her tears of
penitence, and he said: "Her sins which are many are forgiven." Some
people brought to him a man sick of the palsy lying on a bed. And
Jesus seeing their faith said to the sick of the palsy: "Son, be of
good cheer; thy sins are forgiven." This man's sins were remitted,
because remitted and forgiven have the same meaning.

I must here call special attention to one point in all the miracles of
healing wrought by the Lord, and that point has relation to the cause
of all our woe. It is the sin of man. To the impotent man who had lain
by the pool thirty and six years, unable to get in, after being
healed, the Lord when he met him in the Temple said: "Sin no more,
lest a worse thing come upon thee." Paul says: "By one man sin entered
into the world, and death by sin." Death of the body is the point at
which all diseases, ailments and infirmities aim; and the death, the
eternal death, of the soul is the point at which all sins aim. "Death
is the wages of sin." "And ye are witnesses of these things." In
relieving insane, idiotic, epileptic and dumb people of the mental
ailments afflicting them, he always removed the cause by casting out
the devils or evil spirits as the cause of their troubles.

I know that some people doubt or disbelieve that sin is the cause of
all suffering. I have met such. They freely aver that this cannot be
so, because the brute creation suffers, which they say is sinless. It
is a well conceded fact that brutes are not accountable. They have no
future state of existence. They lack that freedom of the will to
choose good or evil, and that understanding to know good from evil,
both of which man has in unlimited possession. Still, brutes are
subject in a low degree to the very same vile passions, the indulgence
of which in man becomes sin to him. And why? Because man is destined
to live to eternity, in another state of existence. If man's existence
were to terminate with the life of his body, his sins, although of a
somewhat viler character than those of the brute creation, would be of
no more account. The Lord sent out his apostles, and in their steps
others to follow, whose great business it was, has been, and ever will
be to tell people that they are sinners; that sin is the cause of all
the misery, wretchedness, suffering and unhappiness in earth and hell,
and that the only