to me are in
earnest, and I want to try to tell them as a brother might tell a
brother, as I might tell to you or try to tell to you if sitting before
my fireside, I want to try to answer the question which I know is upon
your hearts. "What shall I do about this?" I know you say; "Is this all
in the clouds? Is there anything I can do in the right way?" If you are
in earnest, I shall try to tell you what I should do, if I were in your
place, that I might enter into that life and be the free man that we
have tried to describe, of whom we believe certain special and definite
things. What are they? In the first place I would put away my sin. There
is not a man listening to me now who has not some trick of life, some
habit that has possession of him, which he knows is a wrong thing. The
very first thing for a man to do is absolutely to set himself against
them. If you are foul, stop being licentious, at least stop doing
licentious things. If you, in any part of your business, are tricky, and
unsound, and unjust, cut that off, no matter what it costs you. There is
something clear and definite enough for every man. It is as clear for
every man as the sunlight that smites him in his eyes. Stop doing the
bad thing which you are doing. It is drawing the bolt away to let
whatever mercy may come in come in. Stop doing your sin. You can do that
if you will. Stop doing your sin, no matter how mechanical it seems, and
then take up your duty, whatever you can do to make the world more
bright and good. Do whatever you can to help every struggling soul, to
add new strength to any staggering cause, the poor sick man that is by
you, the poor wronged man whom you with your influence might vindicate,
the poor boy in your shop that you may set with new hope upon the road
of life that is beginning already to look dark to him. I cannot tell you
what it is. But you know your duty. No man ever looked for it and did
not find it.

And then the third thing--pray. Yes, go to the God whom you but dimly
see and pray to Him in the darkness, where He seems to sit. Ask Him, as
if He were, that He will give you that which, if He is, must come from
Him, can come from Him alone. Pray anxiously. Pray passionately, in the
simplest of all words, with the simplest of all thoughts. Pray, the
manliest thing that a man can do, the fastening of his life to the
eternal, the drinking of his thirsty soul out of the great fountain of
life. And pray distinctly. Pray upo