n of labour, and that one man's tastes and inclinations
will lead him to one sphere and one form of it; and another man's to
another; and I am quite ready, not to admit, but strongly to insist,
that, whatever happens, home is not to be neglected. 'All men' includes
the slums in England as well as the savages in Africa, and it is no
excuse for neglecting either of these departments that we are trying to
do something in the other. But it is not uncharitable to say that the
objection to which I am referring is most often made by one or other of
two classes, either by people who do not care about the Gospel, nor
recognise the 'good' of it at all, or by people who are ingenious in
finding excuses for not doing the duty to which they are at the moment
summoned. The people that do the one are the people that do the other.
Where do you get your money from for home work? Mainly from the
Christian Churches. Who is it that keeps up missionary work abroad?
Mainly the Christian Churches. There is a vast deal of unreality in that
objection. Just think of the disproportion between the embarrassment of
riches in our Christian appliances here in England and the destitution
in these distant lands. Here the ships are crammed into a dock, close up
against one another, rubbing their yards upon each other; and away out
yonder on the waters there are leagues of loneliness, where never a
sail is seen. Here, at home, we are drenched with Christian teaching,
and the Churches are competing with each other, often like rival
tradespeople for their customers; and away out yonder a man to half a
million is considered a fair allowance. 'Let us do good to all.'

III. Lastly, note the bearing of this elementary precept on the
occasions that rise for the discharge of the duty.

'As we have opportunity.' As I have already said, the Christian way to
look at our circumstances is to regard them as openings for the exercise
of Christian virtue, and therefore summonses to its discharge. And if we
regarded our own position individually, so we should find that there
were many, many doors that had long been opened, into which we had been
too blind or too lazy, or too selfishly absorbed in our own concerns, to
enter. The neglected opportunities, the beckoning doors whose thresholds
we have never crossed, the good that we might have done and have not
done--these are as weighty to sink us as the positive sins, the
opportunities for which have appealed to our worse s