things to which God is calling us. These you have
in fact vowed that you will strive after; and if you are unfaithful in
either respect, if you give up your effort for an easy, drifting life,
you are letting go your confirmation vows; and whereas you were intended
to be the salt of your society, your salt will lose its savour. To
consider this just now may save some of you from discouragement and some
from waste and failure.

Men are stronger to meet their difficulties if they know that they have
to meet them or else to fail and sink. And so it will be with you. You
will be more likely to go forward strong in earnest purpose, strong in
the strength which God supplies, if you bear it in mind that, as St. Paul
would have expressed it, we are appointed unto these trials; and that a
soldier of Christ must expect to have to endure hardness; and in fact
that it is a law of our spiritual life that one of the chief roots of all
growth in strength and goodness is suffering. We grow through trial and
suffering to true manhood in Christ.

So, if you look at your own life and experience, you will find that some
suffer through a sore struggle with their own temptations, or their own
weaknesses--their desires, their appetites, their fears, or the habits
they have contracted, and their struggle may be so hard that it needs all
the grace of God to keep them firm in their purpose. Some again suffer
not from internal but from external hindrances. Companions may be
against them, or a low public opinion may be against them, and they may
feel as if they could hardly stand firm in isolation, or under suspicion,
or mockery, or enmity; and some may suffer because the conscience around
them is depraved, and they feel too weak to fight against it, though they
know and acknowledge its depravity. But however hard may be the fight
there should be no discouragement, if only you are able still to say in
all honesty that you are holding fast to the good purpose which you
uttered in your confirmation vows. Two quite simple warnings may
sometimes do us great service--one, is that we are very apt to exaggerate
the forces against us. They seem very strong when we are feeling weak;
but they sometimes break up and disappear if they are met with a little
courage. And the other warning is this, that we sometimes let ourselves
sink and drift into sinful ways or moral cowardice, by neglecting the
helps which God gives us for the strengthening of a g