If we do not do that, no clever inventions, no useful contrivances like the electric light, will make us Christian. Christianity aims at changing the hearts of the peoples, not their dress, their architecture, their food. According to all accounts, foreign dress is helping to exterminate the South Sea Islanders far more than their old head-hunting did. Paul was wiser than we are in these matters. It was no part of his idea of the work given him to do, to interfere with and upset the whole of the Roman government and_ civilization. They) were good enough for him, and with them he had nothing to do.
How then did he conceive the work the Saviour called him to do, when He appeared to him on the way to Damascus? Paul knew that Rome needed just the same Saviour who had saved him. He was sure that, in the Gospel, he had found that dynamic, that moral and spiritual energy, which, if received into the heart and conscience of the people, would give them just the new life of which their best ren knew they stood in need. It was, Finlay, the historian of the reeks, says, ''A moral rule of life with a religious sanction was a want which society began to feel when Christianity appeared to supply it." Men wanted power in their souls; their principles, and! theories of truth were old andj dead. They had no life, no in-; spiration in them.
Paul knew that he had found the very power needed. He burned to pass it on to Rome, and to all the world. He had found "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." He knew_ that Christ crucified, God suffering and giving Himself in love for us, has an_inspiring, a covering power that nothing else has. Henry Ward r was right when he said that all truth is good, but that Christ, the truths of His love, His dying for us, His rising, triumphant over death, His presence as the eternal life-giver, a moral and spiritual power that create the soul anew, that give just the power we need to do and be all that an enlightened conscience tells us we should do and be. Paul had experienced that in himself, and the reason Why he "must see Rome" was to help to kindle in her people the fire Jesus Christ had, on the way to Damascus, kindled in him.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.