ps?"

Every new hope, every great inspiration which calls the heroes of God to
a fresh attack upon the powers of Satan, is checked and hindered more by
the coldness of the Church than by the hostility of the world. That
hostility is expected, and can be defied. But the infidelity of the
faithful is appalling indeed.

We read with wonder the great things which Christ has promised to
believing prayer, and, at the same time, although we know painfully that
we have never claimed and dare not claim these promises, we wonder
equally at the foreboding question, "When the Son of Man cometh, shall
He find the faith (faith in its fulness) on the earth?" (Luke xviii. 8).
But we ought to remember that our own low standard helps to form the
standard of attainment for the Church at large--that when one member
suffers, all the members suffer with it--that many a large sacrifice
would be readily made for Christ, at this hour, if only ease and
pleasure were at stake, which is refused because it is too hard to be
called well-meaning enthusiasts by those who ought to glorify God in
such attainment, as the first brethren did in the zeal and the gifts of
Paul.

The vast mountains raise their heads above mountain ranges which
encompass them; and it is not when the level of the whole Church is low,
that giants of faith and of attainment may be hoped for. Nay, Christ
stipulates for the agreement of two or three, to kindle and make
effectual the prayers which shall avail.

For the purification of our cities, for the shaming of our legislation
until it fears God as much as a vested interest, for the reunion of
those who worship the same Lord, for the conversion of the world, and
first of all for the conversion of the Church, heroic forces are
demanded. But all the tendency of our half-hearted, abject,
semi-Christianity is to repress everything that is unconventional,
abnormal, likely to embroil us with our natural enemy, the world; and
who can doubt that, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, we
shall know of many an aspiring soul, in which the sacred fire had begun
to burn, which sank back into lethargy and the commonplace, murmuring in
its despair, "Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me;
how then shall Pharaoh hear me?"

It was the last fear which ever shook the great heart of the emancipator
Moses.

At the beginning of the grand historical work, of which all this has
been the prelude, there is set the p