have furnished the moral backbone and
unswerving integrity of many of your great business houses in this
city to-day. From those families will go forth the men whom the good
will trust and the evil fear. The power for good proceeding from
your church will be like the floods which Ezekiel saw pouring out
from beneath the threshold of the Lord's house.

For these common people, whom "God must have loved because he made
so many of them," are the true heirs to the future. And wealth and
culture, art and learning, are to burn like torches to light their
march. Finally, my young brothers, do not be bitterly disappointed
if you are not "popular preachers." Do not let too many people go to
sleep under your preaching, even if one young man did go to sleep
under one of Paul's sermons. But if now and then someone is angry at
what you have said, do not worry too much over it. Preach the truth
in love. If Elijah and John the Baptist, and Peter and Paul, were to
preach to-day I doubt greatly whether they would be popular
preachers. I cannot find that they ever were so. They would probably
be peripatetic candidates, until someone supported them as
independent evangelists. After their death we would rear them great
monuments, and then devote ourselves to railing at Timothy because
he was not more like what we imagine Paul was.

Even Socrates found that he must bid farewell to what men count
honors, if he would follow after truth. You may have the same
experience. You will have to champion many an unpopular cause, and
your people will not like it. They will say you lack tact. Now Paul
was a man of infinite tact. Witness his sermon on Mars' Hill. But if
his letters to the church in Corinth were addressed to most modern
churches, they would soon set out in search of a pastor of greater
adaptability.

If you play the man, and fight the good fight of faith, I do not see
how you can always avoid hitting somebody on the other side. And he
will pull you down if he can; and will probably succeed in sometimes
making your life very uncomfortable. Remember the teaching of
scripture and science, that the upward path was never intended to
be easy. The scriptural passages to this effect you can find all
through the gospels and epistles, and I need not quote them to you.
I will, however, tell you honestly that many are of the opinion that
these passages are now obsolete, being applicable only to the first
centuries, or to especially critical times