course of conduct in reference to plain
and palpable existing evils around them. And such an exhortation to the
duty of plain abstinence from things that the opinion of the world
around us has no objection to, but which are contrary to the light, is
addressed to all Christian people.

The need of it I do not require to illustrate at any length. But let me
remind you that the devil has no more cunning way of securing a long
lease of life for any evil than getting Christian people and Christian
Churches to give it their sanction. What was it that kept slavery alive
for centuries? Largely, that Christian men solemnly declared that it was
a divine institution. What is it that has kept war alive for all these
centuries? Largely, that bishops and preachers have always been ready to
bless colours, and to read a Christening service over a man-of-war--and,
I suppose, to ask God that an eighty-ton gun might be blessed to smash
our enemies to pieces, and not to blow our sailors to bits. And what is
it that preserves the crying evils of our community, the immoralities,
the drunkenness, the trade dishonesty, and all the other things that I
do not need to remind you of in the pulpit? Largely this, that
professing Christians are mixed up with them. If only the whole body of
those who profess and call themselves Christians would shake their hands
clear of all complicity with such things, they could not last.
Individual responsibility for collective action needs to be far more
solemnly laid to heart by professing Christians than ever it has been.

Nor need I remind you, I suppose, with what fatal effects on the Gospel
and the Church itself all such complicity is attended. Even the
companions of wrongdoers despise, whilst they fraternise with, the
professing Christian who has no higher standard than their own. What was
it that made the Church victorious over the combined forces of imperial
persecution, pagan superstition, and philosophic speculation? I believe
that among all the causes that a well-known historian has laid down for
the triumph of Christianity, what was as powerful as--I was going to say
even more than--the Gospel of peace and love which the Church proclaimed
was the standard of austere morality which it held up to a world rotting
in its own filth. And sure I am that wherever the Church says, 'So do
not I, because of the fear of the Lord,' it will gain a power, and will
be regarded with a possibly reluctant, but a very re