al life. Is
there any gulf in eternity, is there any gulf between heaven and hell
that is wider, and deeper, and blacker, that is more impassable than
that gulf which lies between these two men going upon their daily way?
Oh, friends, it is not that God is going to judge us some day. That is
not the awful thing. It is that God knows us now. If I stop an instant
and know that God knows me through all these misconceptions and blunders
of my brethren, that God knows me--that is the awful thing. The future
judgment shall but tell it. It is here, here upon my conscience, now. It
is awful to think how the commonplace things that men can do, the
commonplace thoughts that men can think, the commonplace lives that men
can live, are but in the bosom of the future. The thing that impresses
me more and more is this--that we only need to have extended to the
multitude that which is at this moment present in the few, and the world
really would be saved. There is but the need of the extension into a
multitude of souls of that which a few souls have already attained in
their consecration of themselves to human good, and to the service of
God, and I will not say the millennium would have come, I don't know
much about the millennium, but heaven would have come, the new Jerusalem
would be here. There are men enough in this church this morning, there
are men enough sitting here within the sound of my voice to-day, if they
were inspired by the spirit of God and counted it the great privilege of
their life, to do the work of God--there are men enough here to save
this city, and to make this a glowing city of our Lord, to relieve its
poverty, to lighten its darkness, to lift up the cloud that is upon
hearts, to turn it into a great, I will not say psalm-singing city, but
God-serving, God-abiding city, to touch all the difficult problems of
how society and government ought to be organized then with a power with
which they should yield their difficulty and open gradually. The light
to measure would be clear enough, if only the spirit is there. Give me
five hundred men, nay, give me one hundred men of the spirit that I know
to-day in three men that I well understand, and I will answer for it
that the city shall be saved. And you, my friend, are one of the five
hundred--you are one of the one hundred.

"Oh, but," you say, "is not this slavery over again? You have talked
about freedom, and here I am once more a slave. I had about got free
from the