into his business, to establish the purity of a soul instead of staining it and shaking it, thank God, in this quick, electric atmosphere in which we live, that, too, runs forth.  Do not say in your terror, “I will do nothing.”  You must do something.  Only let Christ tell you—­let Christ tell you that there is nothing that a man rests upon in the moment, that he thinks of, as he looks back upon it when it has sunk into the past, with any satisfaction, except some service to his fellow-man, some strengthening and helping of a human soul.

Two men are walking down the street together and talking away.  See what different conditions those two men are in.  One of them has his soul absolutely full of the desire to help his fellow-man.  He peers into those faces as he goes, and sees the divine possibility that is in them, and he sees the divine nature everywhere.  They are talking about the idlest trifles, about the last bit of local Boston politics.  But in their souls one of those men has consecrated himself, with the new morning, to the glorious service of God, and the other of them is asking how he may be a little richer in his miserable wealth when the day sinks.  Oh, we look into the other world and read the great words and hear it said, Between me and thee, this and that, there is a great gulf fixed; and we think of something that is to come in the eternal 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,