The Asian Christians who held a true faith, had received Jesus as the Christ. So accepting Him, they accepted a fixed standard and ideal of life for themselves. With Jesus Christ evidently set forth before their eyes, let them look back upon their past life; let them contrast what they had been with what they are to be. Let them consider what things they must “put off” and what “put on,” so that they may “be found in Him.” Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan world; keenly its light smote on that gross darkness. There stood the Word made flesh--purity immaculate, love in its very self--shaped forth in no dream of fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man Christ Jesus, born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate,--truth expressed “In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought.” And this life of Jesus, living in those who loved Him (2 Cor. iv. 11), ended not when He passed from earth; it passed from land to land, speaking many tongues, raising up new witnesses at every step as it moved along. It was not a new system, a new creed, but _new men_ that it gave the world in Christ’s disciples, men redeemed from all iniquity, noble and pure as sons of God. It was the sight of Jesus, and of men like Jesus, that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and hardened in its sin. In vain she summoned the gates of death to silence the witnesses of Jesus. At last “She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword, And laid her sceptre down; Her stately purple she abhorred, And her imperial crown. She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports, Her artists could not please; She tore her books, she shut her courts, She fled her palaces; Lust of the eye and pride of life-- She left it all behind, And hurried, torn with inward strife, The wilderness to find” (_Obermann once more_). The Galilean conquered! The new man was destined to convict and destroy the old. “God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. viii. 3). When Jesus lived, died, and rose again, an inconceivable revolution in human affairs had been effected. The cross was planted on the territory of the god of this world; its victory was inevitable. The “grain of wheat” fell into the ground to die: there might be still a long, cruel winter; many a storm and blight would delay its growth; but the harvest was secure. Jesus Christ was the type and the head of a new moral order, destined to control the universe. To see the new and the old man side by side was enough to assure one that the future lay with Jesus. Corruption and decrepitude marked every feature of Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice,--“wasting away in its deceitful lusts.”