coming unto him, exclaimed, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," (John 1:29) he opened at once the great theme of the wreck and rescue of mankind.
The world's first and fatal malady is sin.
All its sufferings and sorrows, its woes and disappointments and wrongs, its corruptions and evil passions, - pride, hatred, envy, and revenge, - its thorns, malaria, mildew, and desert wastes, its fairest and dearest hopes blighted and buried in the mold and darkness and terror of the tomb, - all these find their origin, nourishment, and support in this one root of bitterness, this upas tree of sin.
The world is wrecked and ruined so long
as the virus of this deadly evil courses
in the veins of men.
The only remedy, then is the removal of sin.
The one indispensable condition to the return of peace and happiness and paradise, is that men shall be rescued from this leprous taint; that sin and the love of it - sin which thrusts its deceitful tendrils through all the mind and heart - shall be eradicated from the souls of men, and the curse and scars of its presence be wiped from all the face of nature.
Q: But who is sufficient for this mighty task?
Q: What means are adequate for its accomplishment?
--Men cannot do it;
--angels cannot do it;
so mighty, as to be able to reach down an arm of strength, and lift from humanity the awful burden; only one name under heaven, given among men, whereby they must be saved, - the name of Jesus: the exalted Being to whom John pointed, - the Lamb of God."
Uriah Smith
