the great Christian Church shall be the stronger for your living in it, and the problem of the world be answered, and a certain great peace come into this poor, perplexed phase of our humanity as it sees that new revelation of what Christianity is.  Yes, Christ can give the world the thing it needs in unknown ways and methods that we have not yet begun to suspect.  Christianity has not yet been tried.  My friends, no man dares to condemn the Christian faith to-day, because the Christian faith has not been tried.  Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine, an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain, not until they get the grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and through the lives of men, not until then does Christianity enter upon its true trial and become ready to show what it can do.  Therefore we struggle against our sin in order that men may be saved around us, and not simply that our own souls may be saved.

Tell me you have a sin that you mean to commit this evening that is going to make this night black.  What can keep you from committing that sin?  Suppose you look into its consequences.  Suppose the wise man tells you what will be the physical consequences of that sin.  You shudder and you shrink, and, perhaps, you are partially deterred.  Suppose you see the; glory that might come to you, physical, temporal, spiritual, if you do not commit that sin.  The opposite of it shows itself to you—­the blessing and the richness in your life.  Again there comes a great power that shall control your lust and wickedness.  Suppose there comes to you something even deeper than that, no consequence on consequence at all, but simply an abhorrence for the thing, so that your whole nature shrinks from it as the nature of God shrinks from a sin that is polluting and filthy and corrupt and evil.  They are all great powers.  Let us thank God for them all.  He knows that we are weak enough to need every power that can possibly be brought to bear upon our feeble lives; but if, along with all of them, there could come this other power, if along with them there could come the certainty that if you refrain from that sin to-night you make the sum of sin that is in the world, and so the sum of all temptation that is in the world, and so the sum of future evil that is to spring out of temptation in the world, less, shall there not be a nobler impulse rise up in your heart, and shall you not say:  “I will not do it; I will be honest, I will be sober, I will be pure, at least, to-night”?  I dare to think that there are men here to whom that appeal can come, men who, perhaps, will be all dull and deaf if one speaks to them about their personal salvation; who, if one dares to picture to them, appealing to their better nature, trusting to their nobler soul, that there is in them the power to save other men from sin, and to help the work of God by the control of their own passions and the fulfilment of their own duty, will be stirred to the higher life.  Men—­very often we do not trust them enough—­will answer to the higher appeal that seems to be beyond them when the poor, lower appeal that comes within the region of their selfishness is cast aside, and they will have nothing to do with it.