 Certain positive conclusions that Sheldon indulges in toward the Church (even while noting the capacity of church people to act in less than godly ways) would likely not be drawn as confidently, more than a century later.One senses that Sheldon's contemporaries of turn-of-the-century 1900s were more willing to "count the cost"—that is, go public with their decisions to follow Christ in a more sacrificial way, and succeed in winning the preponderance of their culture to a biblical faith, than the present generation.The strongest epiphany of the book is the individual life change experienced by Raymond's sarcastic editor, whose repulsion to the concept of a personified Christ but increasing attraction to the actual Person he encounters, is magnificently and coherently, in the end, rewarded.