Everything turns on the condition the originator wisely puts first. There is the _crux_. Given money enough, land enough, men enough, fully equip and officer this teeming horde of incapables, and some sort of mechanical drill may be got through somehow. But, “when a man’s own character and defects constitute the reasons for his fall, that character must be changed and that conduct altered if any permanent beneficial results are to be obtained.” The drunkard must be made sober; the criminal, honest; the impure, clean. Can this be done? is the crucial question. Is it possible that a man can emerge altogether out of his old self and become a new creature, with new aims, new thoughts, even new habits? That such renovation is possible is the old contention of Christianity. Here, and not on the ground of the inspiration of the sacred text, must the battle be fought out. The answer to the one urgent question of the age, What think ye of Christ? depends upon the power of the idea of Christ to attract and compel attention, and of the indwelling of Christ to vivify and elevate a single debased and torpid human soul. Many of us believe exultingly that the “All power” which is given into the hands of our Master includes the power of upright standing, strength, and beauty for every bruised human reed. That this is so, we have evidence in plenty, beginning with ourselves. But many others of us, and those not the less noble, consider with Robert Elsmere, that “miracles do not happen.” The recorded miracles serve as pegs for the discussion; the essential miracle is the utter and immediate renovation of a human being. Upon this possibility the saving of the world must hang, and this many cannot receive, not because they are stiff-necked and perverse, but because it is dead against natural law as they know it. Proofs? Cases without end? The whole history of the Christian Church in evidence? Yes; but the history of the Church is a chequered one; and, for individual cases, we do not doubt the veracity of the details; only, nobody knows the whole truth; some preparation in the past, some motive in the present inadvertently kept out of sight, may alter the bearings of any such case. This is, roughly, the position of the honest sceptic, who would, if he could, believe heartily in General Booth’s scheme, and, by consequence, in the convertibility of the entire human race. To improve the circumstances, even of millions, is only a question of the magnitude of the measures taken, the wisdom of the administration. But human nature itself, depraved human nature, is, to him, the impossible quantity. _Can_ the leopard change his spots? THE LAW AGAINST US--HEREDITY. Who are they whom General Booth cheerfully undertakes to re-fashion and make amenable to the conditions of godly and righteous and sober living? Let us hear the life history of many of them in his own words:-- “The rakings of the human cesspool.”