Joyce sat straighter in her seat and her cheeks grew hot with excitement. She felt as if some exquisite, sacred fabric, that was beyond price, and had always been most dear to her had been torn in tatters and scattered to the four winds. She felt as if she must arise and cry out to the man that what he was saying was false--that he was blaspheming! She looked around startled on the indifferent audience composed in a dreamy silence of peace, eyes intent upon the preacher, lips placid, no look of protest in their faces! How strange! How awful! Was there no one, not one, to stand up for the Bible, for the miracle of healing, for the matchless God-nature of Christ? But other words suddenly arrested her, standing out from the drab background of the sermon sharply: “The time has come when the world no longer needs a bloody atonement to appease an angry God. The world has grown beyond that ghastly idea. The death of Christ was to show the world how much He loved it, not to wash away its evil deeds in some mysterious way. People must undo their own evil deeds. No one could do that for them. We must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for it was the God in us that works. We all have God in us, only we are not letting Him work, just as that blind man had sight, but he was not using it--” Joyce almost started to her feet. She seemed to be crying out in her throat so that it hurt: “That is not true, oh, that is not true! Will no one tell him what an awful thing he is saying?” But not a sound came from her lips, of course. She found that her limbs were trembling and she felt as though she scarcely dared look up. To think that she was here in God’s house listening to this and no one making any protest! She looked around again, aghast at the smug, satisfied faces of the congregation. It was almost as if they were not listening. The minister’s voice broke again upon her troubled spirit: “No man’s death can do away with my guilt. No amount of shed blood can cleanse me from sin. I’ve got to do that _myself_. As Jesus made the man go to the river and wash the clay away, so you and I must wash away our own sins in the sweat of our brow, working for Him. We must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, be kind one to another, uplift the fallen, uplift and broaden humanity, put away sin from our lives, and in its place put deeds of kindness such as Jesus did. That life and that alone can atone for a sinful past. Let us pray.” During the prayer that followed tears came into the eyes of the wounded girl, but a choir of the angelic host seemed somewhere far away to be chanting, and the words they spoke were clear and distinct: “The blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.