one stumbling block in your way is, you say, that you are revolted and kept at arm’s-length by the separatist and exclusive habits and maxims of those who profess to have the faith you want. many of them are kind, exemplary men, but just because they are christians, and in so far forth as they are christians, they are calling to you to come out from amongst the people of the world—to separate yourselves from an adulterous generation.

against this call something which you know to be true and noble in you rises up. you have felt that what your age is crying out for, is union. you acknowledge the power of that cry in your own hearts. you want to feel with all men, and for all men. if you need a faith at all, it is one which shall meet that cry, which shall teach you how all men are bound together; not how some may be separated from the rest. you will not be false to your age. you will have no faith at all, or a faith for all mankind.

keep to that; take nothing less than that; only look again and see whether that is not just what christ offers you. again i urge you not to look at his followers, real or professing—look at him, look at his life.

was he exclusive? did ever man or woman come near him and he turn away? did he not go amongst all ranks, into every society? did he not go to the houses of great men and rulers; of pharisees, of poor men, of publicans? did he not frequent the temple, the marketplace, the synagogue, the sea-shore, the hillside, the haunts of outcasts and harlots? was he not to be found at feasts and at funerals? wherever men and women were to be found, there was his place and his work; and there is ours. he who believes in him must go into every society where he has any call whatever. who are we that we should pick and choose? the greatest ruffian, the most abandoned woman, that ever walked the face of this earth, were good enough for our lord to die for. if he sends us amongst them, he will take care of us, and has something for us to do or speak, for or to them. the greatest king, the holiest saint on earth, is not too high company for one for whom christ died, as he did for you and me. so, if he sends us amongst great or holy people, let us go, and learn what he means us to learn there.

i know how deeply many of you feel and mourn over the miseries and disorder of england and the world—how you long to do something towards lightening ever[239] so small a part of those miseries, rescuing ever so small a corner of the earth from that disorder. i know well how earnestly many of you are working in one way or another for your country and your brethren. i know what high hopes many of you have for the future of the world and the destiny of man. i say, mourn on, work on; abate not one jot of any hope you have ever had for the world or for man. your hopes, be they what they may, have never been high enough—your work never earnest enough. but i ask you whether your hopes and your work have not been marred again and again, whether you have not been thrown back again and again into listlessness and hopelessness, by failures of one kind or another, whether you have not felt that those failures have been caused more or less by your own uncertainty, by your having had to work and fight without a leader, with comrades to whom you were bound only by chance, to journey without any clear knowledge of the road you were going, or where it led to?

at such times have you not longed for light and guidance? what would you have not given for a well of light and hope and strength, springing up within you and renewing your powers and energies? what would you not have given for the inward certainty that the road you were travelling was the right one, however you might stumble on it; that the line of battle in which you stood was the line for all true men, and was marching[240] break at the point which had been given you to hold, whatever might become of you? well, be sure that light and guidance, that renewal of strength and hope, that certainty as to your side and your road, you are meant to have; they have been prepared, and are ready, for every man of you, whenever you will take them. the longings for them are whispered in your hearts by the leader, whose cross, never turned back, ever triumphing more and more over all principalities and powers of evil, blazes far ahead in the van of our battles. he has been called the captain of our salvation, the lion of the tribe of judah, the lamb who was slain for the world; he has told us his name, the son of god and the son of man; he has claimed to be the redeemer, deliverer, leader of mankind.