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Some man who is not only morally corrupt, but also a mere negative quantity in society, experiences the renewing grace of God and comes into the consciousness of redemption and pardon. Vastly more than a transformation of moral character is effected. Numberless dormant powers of manhood are developed. Unsuspected strata of capacity are uncovered. Thrift and intelligence and enterprise are born, and the whole nature experiences a transformation akin to that wrought in the physical world by the coming of the springtime. There are numbers of such men in every community. So long as they were fettered with the consciousness of sin, all their powers and faculties were cramped; but when Christ spoke deliverance from guilt, their whole affectional and intellectual being felt the thrill and stir of a new life, and widened out and blossomed in most marvellous fashion. There is an infinite breadth to the assurance: "If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." What the Scripture calls the "liberty" of the children of God is not the little narrow ecclesiastical matter which so many people think it. It means affluence and opulence of life and possibility, and when one who has long been a mere cipher in the community branches out into all manner of healthy and handsome growths under the quickening of the pardoning love of Christ, the greatest of miracles is wrought before our eyes. We count it a stupendous achievement of genius when under the cunning hand of the artist the rough block of marble grows into the perfect statue; but what is that compared to the transfiguration of the living man which is so often effected by the Divine love manifesting itself in full and free and felt forgiveness? It is quite as marvellous as a new creation.

(Monday Club Sermons.)

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KJV: Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?

WEB: "Why does this man speak blasphemies like that? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"