e Spirit in us which transforms everything into
its own beauty, and makes men, through all the regions of their nature,
holy and pure. Then ask yourselves the question whether the standard of
devotion and consecration in any church witnesses of the presence of a
Divine Spirit. A little handful of people, the best of them very
partially touched with the life of God, and very imperfectly consecrated
to His service, surrounded by a great mass about whom we can scarcely,
in the judgment of charity, say even so much, that is the description of
most of our congregations. 'Are these His doings?' Surely somebody
else's than His.

Take another question. Do the relations of modern Christians and their
churches to one another attest the presence of a unifying Spirit? 'We
have all been made to drink into one Spirit,' said Paul. Alas, alas!
does it seem as if we had? Look round professing Christendom, look at
the rivalries and the jealousies between two chapels in adjoining
streets. Look at the gulfs between Christian men who differ only on some
comparative trifle of organisation and polity, and say if such things
correspond to the Pentecostal promise of one Spirit which is to make all
the members into one body? 'Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Are
these _His_ doings?'

Take another branch of evidence. Look at the comparative impotence of
the Church in its conflict with the growing worldliness of the world. I
do not forget how much is being done all about us to-day, and how still
Christ's Gospel is winning triumphs, but I do not suppose that any man
can look thoughtfully and dispassionately on the condition, say, for
instance, of Manchester, or of any of our great towns, and mark how the
populace knows nothing and cares nothing about us and our Christianity,
and never comes into our places of worship, and has no share in our
hopes any more than if they lived in Central Africa, and that after
eighteen hundred years of nominal Christianity, without feeling that
some malign influence has arrested the leaping growth of the early
Church, and that somehow or other that lava stream, if I might so call
it, which poured hot from the heart of God in the old days has had its
flow checked, and over its burning bed there has spread a black and
wrinkled crust, whatsoever lingering heat there may still be at the
centre. 'If God be with us, why has all this come upon us?'

III. And now, lastly, let us think for a moment of the solution of t