the customs alluded to, are the results of _intention_. They spring
up in a lack of interest and of the consciousness of duty. They grow
rank and luxuriant in neglect. If we were only in earnest as to these
vices and crimes and guilty customs; if we would only wake from our
apathy, to reflection and conviction; how soon would they diminish, and
how many of them would pass away!

But, as comprehensive of this, and in fact all the rest that may be
said, I observe, finally, that the temptations of a great city are
strong because of a lack of the spirit of _Christian love_. In one
respect, especially, is it true that men in general are not _with_
Jesus, and therefore are against him. They have not his sympathies, his
spirit of self-sacrifice, his broad, deep, universal charity. Baneful
customs, and cold indifferentism grow up in a soil that is watered by no
living and unselfish love. They show the dryness and the baseness of our
social state. And it is not merely in the lack of active and practical
love that the Tempter grows strong; but in the exercise of a prevalent
_uncharitableness_. Too many of us have no disposition but scorn for the
fallen; see no blessed possibilities in them; do not detect any divine
ray glimmering in the thick darkness--do not discern the precious soul,
like a crown-jewel, in its filthy and battered casket. And if this
paralyzes and kills the springs of our own activity, need I say how the
hearts of the offending are repelled and hardened in such a hostile
atmosphere? Need I say how desperate is the Ishmaelitish conviction;
the sense of isolation and antagonism; and, on the other hand, how
powerful and healing, even for the most distant and hopeless, is the
sweet attraction of sympathy? And what are we, that we dare to cherish
this exclusive horror, this pitiless, unrelenting scorn? When we
consider our own slips, compared with our temptations; the account to
which God may hold us, not the smooth standards of human respectability;
how much higher is our own moral level, that we feel no chords of a
common humanity reaching down even to those fallen ones, and cannot
stoop to touch them? My friends, it may be, after all, that the Tempter
has no surer ally than the averted face of contempt and the word of
unsoftened rebuke, driving the barb of conscious guilt deeper and
despairingly into a brother's soul.

And, as I look upon this mass of social evil, these steaming wells of
passion, these solid for