lation of what
Christianity is. Yes, Christ can give the world the thing it needs in
unknown ways and methods that we have not yet begun to suspect.
Christianity has not yet been tried. My friends, no man dares to condemn
the Christian faith to-day, because the Christian faith has not been
tried. Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine,
an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain, not until they get
the grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and through
the lives of men, not until then does Christianity enter upon its true
trial and become ready to show what it can do. Therefore we struggle
against our sin in order that men may be saved around us, and not simply
that our own souls may be saved.

Tell me you have a sin that you mean to commit this evening that is
going to make this night black. What can keep you from committing that
sin? Suppose you look into its consequences. Suppose the wise man tells
you what will be the physical consequences of that sin. You shudder and
you shrink, and, perhaps, you are partially deterred. Suppose you see
the; glory that might come to you, physical, temporal, spiritual, if you
do not commit that sin. The opposite of it shows itself to you--the
blessing and the richness in your life. Again there comes a great power
that shall control your lust and wickedness. Suppose there comes to you
something even deeper than that, no consequence on consequence at all,
but simply an abhorrence for the thing, so that your whole nature
shrinks from it as the nature of God shrinks from a sin that is
polluting and filthy and corrupt and evil. They are all great powers.
Let us thank God for them all. He knows that we are weak enough to need
every power that can possibly be brought to bear upon our feeble lives;
but if, along with all of them, there could come this other power, if
along with them there could come the certainty that if you refrain from
that sin to-night you make the sum of sin that is in the world, and so
the sum of all temptation that is in the world, and so the sum of future
evil that is to spring out of temptation in the world, less, shall there
not be a nobler impulse rise up in your heart, and shall you not say: "I
will not do it; I will be honest, I will be sober, I will be pure, at
least, to-night"? I dare to think that there are men here to whom that
appeal can come, men who, perhaps, will be all dull and deaf if one
speaks to them ab