tia, when all the forces of darkness
seem to be in full blast; when steam printing-presses are publishing
infidel tracts; when express railroad trains are carrying messengers
of sin; when fast clippers are laden with opium and rum; when the
night-air of our cities is polluted with the laughter that breaks up
from the ten thousand saloons of dissipation and abandonment; when the
fires of the second death already are kindled in the cheeks of some
who, only a little while ago, were incorrupt. Oh, never since the
curse fell upon the earth has there been a time when it was such an
unwise, such a cruel, such an awful thing for the Church to sleep!
The great audiences are not gathered in the Christian churches; the
great audiences are gathered in temples of sin--tears of unutterable
woe their baptism, the blood of crushed hearts the awful wine of their
sacrament, blasphemies their litany, and the groans of the lost world
the organ dirge of their worship.

II. Again, if you want to be qualified to meet the duties which this
age demands of you, you must on the one hand avoid reckless
iconoclasm, and on the other hand not stick too much to things because
they are old. The air is full of new plans, new projects, new theories
of government, new theologies, and I am amazed to see how so many
Christians want only novelty in order to recommend a thing to their
confidence; and so they vacillate and swing to and fro, and they are
useless, and they are unhappy. New plans--secular, ethical,
philosophical, religious, cisatlantic, transatlantic--long enough to
make a line reaching from the German universities to Great Salt Lake
City. Ah, my brother, do not take hold of a thing merely because it is
new. Try it by the realities of a Judgment Day.

But, on the other hand, do not adhere to any thing merely because it
is old. There is not a single enterprise of the Church or the world
but has sometimes been scoffed at. There was a time when men derided
even Bible societies; and when a few young men met near a hay-stack in
Massachusetts and organized the first missionary society ever
organized in this country, there went laughter and ridicule all around
the Christian Church. They said the undertaking was preposterous. And
so also the work of Jesus Christ was assailed. People cried out, "Who
ever heard of such theories of ethics and government? Who ever
noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus has?" Ezekiel had talked of
mysterious wings and w