Norwich bulletin., 1911-02-20
Redeemabiiity of the Human Race Notes and Personals.

Rev. c. H. Ricketts preached an in- teresting sermon at the Greeneville Congregational church Sunday morn ing on The Redeemability of the Hu- man Race. The text was John vi 37, Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. He said in part: I have put quotation marks around this subject. The expression is not original with me. It was uttered by that remarkable woman, Maud Ball. ington Booth, to the vast audience of men that crowded into Polls theater last Sunday afternoon. I sat where I could look into the faces of those 1900 men and wondered what it was that was gripping them so completely. It was not her amazing personality, nor strikingly expressive face, nor sympathetic voice, but her great beat ing heart that had caught the great fact of the divine Fatherhood in re- lation to the human brotherhood.
 The breadth of her application of the redemptive purpose of God is in keeping with the thought of the age Once our New England pulpits rang eternity elected some to be saved and left the rest to- be reprobated.' The theory now is: Every man the world over is redeemable." This view makes the Gospel a great working hypothe- sis. The substitution of reformation
 
 Maud Ballfngton Booth and her work for the betterment of criminals a pos sibility. There are three arguments in support of the redeemability of the race:
 I. Nature Puts Emphasis on the Attempt to Recover Normal Condi- q. Nature is everywhere hostile to dis ease, accident and death. She hates them she fights against them and for tifies herself against them. See how the eye is guardedi Mark its won- slashing 1t will stand from the sur geon's knife borders on the miracu- lous! Medicine can only aid in the work of recovery; 1t would be a flat failure were 1t not for the redeema- bility of, the body. Everywhere in the nendous impulse to live; to exchange abnormal for normal conditions. Branches nearly severed from the trunk. lawns apparently killed by the drought acres swept by fire until they are as black as shroud, show won- derfully recuperative powers. By par ity of reason We can show that the same thing is true in the mental world.
 2. This Thought is Strengthened by the Divine Conception of the Human Brotherhood.
 
 God works: back of all law is the same principle. The law of nature is not one thing and the law of grace some thing entirely different. God never contradicts Himself. He does not do one thing in nature and then nullify it by some work of grace. If He has made our bodily and mental life re- deemable, He cannot have left our spiritual natures unredeemable
 Great emphasis is, put on the fact that God is not respecter of per- sons.' Stripped bare of all the bar riers that society rears between one soul and another, such as wealth fame position. race. color. and ability, one soul is no better than another soul. God respects all souls, hence. in the person. of His Son, He must have died for as many as He respected, and therefore all are redeeTnable The New Testament carries out this idea: Christ is the light"-not of one na- tion merely-but "of the world" He gave His only begotten Son that who soever be-" that means anyone if it means anything
 in the Imperishability of the Divine in the Human.
 Every man born into the world has the image of God and you can't quite stamp it out. The last child has 1t as well as the first. The old theolosiaas useu to Idlk dDOut Adam standing as the federal headship of the race and that in his fall we all took a mighty tumble, and hence we come into the world with a moral taint You cam not separate sin from guilt, nor guilt from conscious Knowledge. which no newborn child has. When you look into the sweet face of little baby do you feel that he is guilty creature in Gods sight? simply don't believe it. l repudiate the idea as an insult to the Moral Governor of the universe and a travesty on a religion based on love
 In spite of the awful depravitv of the human soul, I believe that a spark of the divine is left The Escorial palace gutted by fire was beautiful in ruins--a thousand times more valua- : ble than a perfect wigwam. The arch itect reconstructed and made the sec ond palace more beautiful than the first. He who made the human soul can remake it on a larger and grand CT plan.
 It is the glory of Mrs. Booths work that she discovers the Escorial in the hearts of prisoners. They know that