The whole point indeed is perfectly expressed in the very word
which we use for a man in hospital; "patient" is in the passive mood;
"sinner" is in the active. If a man is to be saved from influenza,
he may be a patient. But if he is to be saved from forging,
he must be not a patient but an IMPATIENT. He must be personally
impatient with forgery. All moral reform must start in the active
not the passive will.

Here again we reach the same substantial conclusion. In so far
as we desire the definite reconstructions and the dangerous revolutions
which have distinguished European civilization, we shall not discourage
the thought of possible ruin; we shall rather encourage it.
If we want, like the Eastern saints, merely to contemplate how right
things are, of course we shall only say that they must go right.
But if we particularly want to MAKE them go right, we must insist
that they may go wrong.

Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common
modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ.
The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end.
But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary.
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we
knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast
for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion
on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete.
Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God,
must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds,
Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.
For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean
that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break.