laugh. It is a great deal too true of--I will not
venture to say what percentage of--the professing Christians of this
day. Work at your religion. That is the great lesson of my text.
Endeavour with confidence of success. The Book of Proverbs says: 'He
that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster,'
and that is true. A man that does 'the work of the Lord negligently' is
scarcely to be credited with doing it at all. Dear friends, young or
old, if you name the name of Christ, be in earnest, and make earnest
work of your Christian character.

And now may I venture two or three very plain exhortations? First, I
would say--if you mean to make your Christian life a piece of genuine
work and striving, the first thing that you have to do is to endeavour
in the direction of keeping its aim very clear before you. There are
many ways in which we may state the goal of the Christian life, but let
us put it now into the all-comprehensive form of likeness to Jesus
Christ, by entire conformity to His Example and full interpretation of
His life. I do not say 'Heaven'; I say 'Christ.'

That is our aim, the loftiest idea of development that any human spirit
can grasp, and rising high above a great many others which are noble but
incomplete. The Christian ideal is the greatest in the universe. There
is no other system of thought that paints man as he is, so darkly; there
is none that paints man as he is meant to be, in such radiant colours.
The blacks upon the palette of Christianity are blacker, and the whites
are whiter, and the golden is more radiant, than any other painter has
ever mixed. And so just because the aim which lies before the least and
lowest of us, possessing the most imperfect and rudimentary
Christianity, is so transcendent and lofty, it is hard to keep it clear
before our eyes, especially when all the shabby little necessities of
daily life come in to clutter up the foreground, and hide the great
distance. Men may live up at Darjeeling there on the heights for weeks,
and never see the Himalayas towering opposite. The lower hills are
clear; the peaks are wreathed in cloud. So the little aims, the nearer
purposes, stand out distinct and obtrusive, and force themselves, as it
were, upon our eyeballs, and the solemn white Throne of the Eternal away
across the marshy levels, is often hid, and it needs an effort for us to
keep it clear before us. One of the main reasons for much that is
unsatisfactor