, shall I blame that man, that woman, if they
cry at times, "Father, take me home, this earth is no place for me."
Shall I bid them do aught but cling to the feet of Christ and cry, "If it
be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but
as Thou wilt." Oh, not of such do I speak; not of such sharers of
Christ's unselfish suffering here, that they may be sharers of His
unselfish joy hereafter. Not of them do I speak; but of those who only
wish to make up for selfish discomforts and disappointments in this life
by selfish comforts and satisfaction in the next; and who therefore take
up (let me use the honest English word) some maundering form of religion,
which, to judge from their own conduct, they usually only half believe;
those who seem, on six days of the week, as fond of finery and frivolity
as any other gay worldlings, and on the seventh join eagerly in hymns in
which (in one case at least) they inform the Almighty God of truth, who
will not be mocked, that they lie awake at night, weeping because they
cannot die and see "Jerusalem the golden," and so forth. Or those,
again, who for six days in the week are absorbed in making money--
honestly if they can, no doubt, but still making money, and living
luxuriously on their profits--and on the seventh listen with satisfaction
to preachers and hymns which tell them that this world is all a howling
wilderness, full of snares and pitfalls; and that in this wretched place
the Christian can expect nothing but tribulation and persecution till he
"crosses Jordan, and is landed safe on Canaan's store," and so forth.

My friends, my friends, as long as a man talks so, blaspheming God's
world--which, when He made it, behold it was all very good--and laying
the blame of their own ignorance and peevishness on God who made them,
they must expect nothing but tribulation and sorrow. But the tribulation
and the sorrow will be their own fault, and not God's. If religious
professors will not take St. Peter's advice and the Psalmist's advice; if
they will go on coveting and scheming about money, and how they may get
money; if they will go on being neither pitiful, courteous, nor
forgiving, and hating and maligning whether it be those who differ from
them in doctrine, or those who they fancy have injured them, or those who
merely are their rivals in the race of life; then they are but too likely
to find this world a thorny place,