But out from the broken heart came running the blood that proved both cleansing and a salve.  And out of the grave of that lost life came a new life that proved an incentive, and a tremendous dynamic.  The blood cleanseth the inside of the man in the gutter, and heals his sores, restores his sight and hearing and sensitiveness of touch.  The new life put inside the man makes him rise up and walk determinedly out of the gutter to a new location.  He is a new man, with a new inside, in a new location.  That threefold cord is ahead of Solomon’s—­it can’t be broken.

And, if you’ll mark it keenly, a new inside includes a new outside.  The thing that in religious talk is called conversion is a sociological factor that cannot be ignored by the thoughtful student.  The drunkard goes down to the old-fashioned sort of mission where they insist on teaching that the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin, and that the Holy Spirit will make a new man of you, and burn the sin out.

And something happens to the drunkard.  He kneels a drunkard, drunk; he rises a man, sober.  He goes to the hole he calls home.  And at once a change begins to work gradually out.  He treats his wife and children differently.  He works.  They are fed better and clothed warmer.  He gets a better house in a better neighbourhood.  The new sociological factor is at work.  It began inside; it revolutionizes the outside.

Settlement houses, better environment, improved outer conditions of every sort, are blessed, and only blessed, after the inside is fixed or in helping to get it fixed.  If that isn’t done, they are simply as a lovely bit of pink-coloured court-plaster skilfully adjusted over an ugly incurable ulcer.  The man is befooled while the ulcer eats into his vitals.

It’s only the blood-power of a Jesus, the Jesus, that can fix the inside.  He cuts out the ulcer and puts in a new strain of blood.  Then the inner includes the outer.  And the most grateful of all is the man.  This is the Jesus-plan, John says, “full of grace and truth.”

Grace is named first.  It comes first.  That is a bit of the graciousness of it.  That’s love’s exquisite diplomacy.  We feel the grateful warmth of the sun in the winter’s air, and are drawn by it.  We smell the fragrance of the roses and come eagerly nearer.  We hear the winsomeness of a gentle wooing voice a-calling, and instinctively answer to it.  And then we find the sun’s power to heal and cleanse and its insistence on burning up what can’t stand its heat.

We find the inspiring, purifying uplift of the flowers, drawing us up the hillside to the top.  We find the voice—­the Man—­gently but with unflinching unbending determination that never yields a hairbreadth, insisting on our coming clear up to the topmost level.  That’s a wondrous order of words, and coupling of helps, grace and truth.