INTRODUCTION
This little story was first read by me to my Young People’s society of Christian Endeavor in the Central Church, Topeka, Kan., during the spring of 1898.
There is nothing impossible in the story, which is largely founded on actual facts known to very many besides myself. What seems to be miraculous or impossible in the redemption of humanity seems so because too often the Christian disciple does not give himself for the solution of the human problem.
This is the one great truth I have wished to impress by the telling of this history, which is partly true, and might easily be wholly so; the truth that it is God with us, Emmanuel, who is redeeming the world, and it must be ourselves, the Christ in us, with the unredeemed humanity near us, that must redeem it. The moment the churches, the Endeavor societies, the Christian disciples everywhere, put themselves into any unredeemed spot in any town or city or place, the miracle of redemption will begin.
It is with the prayer that all who read this little story will give something of this redeeming love to a needy world that the book is sent out. There is the secret of the atonement in the three short words, “Who gave Himself.”
Charles M. Sheldon.
