I remember when in the old country a young man came to me -- a minister -- and said he wanted to talk with me. He said to me: |Mr. Moody, you are either all right and I am all wrong, or else I am right, and you are all wrong.| |Well, sir,| said I, |You have the advantage of me. You have heard me preach, and you know what doctrines I hold, whereas I have not heard you, and don't know what you preach.| |Well,| said he, |the difference between your preaching and mine is that you make out that salvation is got by Christ's death, and I make out that it is attained by His life.| |Now, what do you do with the passages bearing upon the death?| and I quoted the passages, |Without the shedding of blood there is no remission,| and |He Himself bore our own sins by His own body on the tree,| and asked him what he did with them, for instance. |Never preach them at all.| I quoted a number of passages more, and he gave me the same answer. |Well, what do you preach?| I finally asked. |Moral essays,| he replied. Said I, |Did you ever know anybody to be saved by that kind of thing, did you ever convert anybody by them?| |I never aimed at that kind of conversion; I meant to get men to heaven by culture -- by refinement.| |Well,| said I, |If I didn't preach those texts, and only preached culture, the whole thing would be a sham.| |And it is a sham to me,| was his reply. I tell you the moment a man breaks away from this doctrine of blood, religion becomes a sham, because the whole teaching of this book is of one story, and this is, that Christ came into the world and died for our sins.