d Thy strength unto this generation, and Thy power to all them
which are yet for to come."

But, for some reason or other, this generation does not seem to care to
see God's strength; and those that are yet for to come seem likely to
believe less and less in God's power--believe less and less that they are
in Christ's kingdom, and that Christ is ruling over them and all the
world. They have not faith in the Living Lord. But they must get back
that faith, if they wish to keep that wealth and prosperity after which
every one scrambles so greedily now-a-days; for those who forget God are
treading, they and their children after them, not, as they fancy, the
road to riches--they are treading the road to ruin. So it always was, so
it always will be. Yet the majority of mankind will not see it, and the
preacher must not expect to be believed when he says it. Nevertheless it
is true. Those who forget that they are in Christ's kingdom, Christ does
not go out of His way to punish them. They simply punish themselves.
They earn their own ruin by the very laws of human nature. They must
find hope in something and strength in something; and if they will not
see that God is their hope, they will hope to get rich as fast as
possible, and make themselves safe so. If they will not see that God is
their strength, they will find strength in cunning, in intrigue, in
flattery of the strong and tyranny over the weak, and in making
themselves strong so. They want a present help in trouble; and if they
will not believe that God is a present help in trouble, they will try to
help themselves out of their trouble by begging, lying, swindling,
forging, and all those meannesses which fill our newspapers with shameful
stories day by day, and which all arise simply out of want of faith in
God.

Moreover, it is written, "Be still, and know that I am God." And if men
will not be still, they will not know that He is God. And if they do not
know that the gracious Christ is God, they will not be still; and
therefore they will grow more and more restless, discontented, envious,
violent, irreverent, full of passions which injure their own souls, and
sap the very foundations of order and society and civilised life. And
what can come out of all these selfish passions, when they are let loose,
but that in which selfishness must always end, but that same mistrust and
anarchy, ending in that same poverty and wretched