This hymn was written by Miss Phoebe Cary while visiting a friend. She had attended church and was deeply stirred, and on returning to her friend’s house she retired to “the little back third-story bedroom” and wrote this expression of her experience. This incident in China gave her much happiness. After her death the older man in the above story wrote to Dr. Conwell saying that he was now a “hard working Christian” and that Harry had renounced his evil ways. CHAPTER IX “_The Old Rugged Cross_” The Cross is the triumphant symbol of a militant and puissant Christianity. It tells of “love divine, all loves excelling.” It sustains hope in the final victory of good. It establishes faith in the persistent reality of truth. The Gospel of the Cross proclaims redemption from sin, reconciliation with God, realization of goodwill to all people. There is absolutely nothing else to equal the appeal of the Cross in its power to produce the most desirable changes in the individual and in society. Wherever it has been preached with the conviction of experience and the constraint of passion, the Holy Christ has won trophies in lives recovered from the waste of sin, renewed by the power of grace, enriched by the practices of purity and peace. Indeed, the only cure for our distracted age is found in the Atoning Christ. This is endorsed by the voices of redeemed multitudes of every age and land. The testimony from life is conclusive. It holds us by a resolute determination to announce its message of pardon and joy to everyone. In the words of John Oxenham, “Love, with the lifted hands and thorn-crowned head; Still conquers death, though life itself be fled,— His Cross still stands! Yes,—Love triumphant stands, and stands for more, In our great need, than e’er it stood before! His Cross still stands!”[21] The Cross makes a universal appeal, as in this incident related by Miss Margaret Sangster[22] when All Wanted the Same Song “I was in a radio studio, the other night, listening to the broadcast of a program. Naturally I was interested. Interested in what the performers did and how they were handled and the precision with which the timing was accomplished. But the one thing that interested me more than the actual happenings in the studio, was something quite apart from the especial broadcast that was taking place. For, as I sat there, I was conscious of a great flurry going on in an outer office. I could see, as I sat there, a constant stream of messenger boys—and I was conscious of an equally constant answering of telephones. I couldn’t help feeling that some great event was taking place—or was about to take place.