In introduction Dr. Moxom stated that it was his purpose to bring out the principle underlying the text rather than to point out its historic significance. Jesus did destroy, but His purpose was to plant, to create. If He destroyed existing institutions He established still better ones. He was no iconoclast. Especially at the present day was there a need for paying heed to this constructive side of Christ's work. Young men were inclined at present to be iconoclastic. They forgot that though destruction is easy, construction is a slow and painful process. A man's religion might be fetichism but it might be the best that he was able to have. To destroy it without putting something better in its place was to do a positive injury.
Applied to ourselves, these thoughts suggested that bad habits and evil thoughts were to be removed by the cultivation of those that were good. Social evils should be cured by the influence of pure lives. Forms and dogmas that were outgrown should be supplanted only by better forms and better dogmas. The mind should be relieved of half truths by learning whole truths. The great example of the reformer, after all, was Christ.