im'; and they have not
done it yet. Now, therefore, 'as there was a readiness to will, let
there be also the performance.'

But it is not only in regard to that most important of all resolves that
I wish to say a word. All Christians, I am sure, know what it is, over
and over again, to have had stirrings in their hearts which they have
been able to consolidate into determination, but have not been able to
carry into act. 'The children have come to the birth, and there is not
strength to bring them forth.' That is true about all of us, more or
less, and it is very solemnly true of a great many of us professing
Christians. We have tried to cure--we have determined that we will
cure--manifest and flagrant defects or faults in our Christian life. We
have resolved, and some nipping frost has come, and the blossoms have
dropped on the grass before they have ever set into fruit. I know that
is so about you, because I know that it is so about myself. And
therefore, dear brethren, I appeal to you, and ask you whether the
exhortation of my text has not a sharp point for every one of
us--whether the universality of this defect does not demand that we all
should gravely consider the exhortation here before us?

Then, again, let me remind you how this injunction is borne in upon us
by the consideration of the strength of the opposition with which we
have always to contend, in every honest attempt to bring to act our best
resolutions. Did you ever try to cure some little habit, some mere
trifle, a trick of manner or twist of the finger, or some attitude or
tone that might be ugly and awkward, and that people told you that it
would be better to get rid of? You know how hard it is. There is always
a tremendous gulf between the ideal and its realisation in life. As long
as we are moving _in vacuo_ we move without any friction or difficulty;
but as soon as we come out into a world where there are an atmosphere
and opposing forces, then friction comes in, and speed diminishes; and
we never become what we aim to be. We begin with grand purposes, and we
end with very poor results. We all start, in our early days, with the
notion that our lives are going to be radiant and beautiful, and all
unlike what the limitations of power and the antagonisms that we have to
meet make of them at last. The tree of our life's doings has to grow,
like those contorted pines on the slopes of the Alps, in many storms,
with heavy weights of snow on its branche