n your knees. One grows tired
sometimes of the free thought, which is yet perfectly true, that a man
can pray anywhere and anyhow. But men have found it good to make the
whole system pray. Kneel down, and the very bending of these obstinate
and unused knees of yours will make the soul kneel down in the humility
in which it can be exalted in the sight of God.

And then read your Bible. How cold that sounds! What, read a book to
save my soul? Read an old story that my life in these new days shall be
regenerated and saved? Yes, do just that, for out of that book, if you
read it truly, shall come the divine and human person. If you can read
it with your soul as well as with your eyes, there shall come the Christ
there walking in Palestine. You shall see Him so much greater than the
Palestine in which he walks, that at one word of prayer, as you bend
over the illuminated page, there shall lift up that body-being of the
Christ, and come down through the centuries and be your helper at your
side. So read your Bible.

And then seek the Church--oh, yes, the Church. Do you think, my friends,
you who stand outside the Church, and blame her for her inconsistencies,
and tell of her shortcomings, and point out the corruptions that are in
her history, all that are in her present life to-day--do you really
believe that there is an earnest man in the Church that does not know
the Church's weaknesses and faults just as well as you do? Do you
believe that there is one of us living in the life and heart of the
Church who don't think with all his conscience, who don't in every day
in deep distress and sorrow know how the Church fails of the great life
of the Master, how far she is from being what God meant she should be,
what she shall be some day? But all the more I will put my life into
that Church, all the more I will drink the strength that she can give to
me and make what humble contribution to her I can bring of the
earnestness and faithfulness of my life. Come into the Church of Jesus
Christ. There is no other body on the face of the earth that represents
what she represents--the noble destiny of the human soul, the great
capacity of human faith, the inexhaustible and unutterable love of God,
the Christ, who stands to manifest them all.

Now those are the things for a man to do who really cares about all
this. Those are the things for an earnest man to do. They have no power
in themselves, but they are the opening of the windows. A