Contrast the indolence here with the earnestness in life. The same
men who sit with faces stolid and expressionless over a sermon--meet
them on Monday morning! They go to sleep at prayer or over a Bible,
but see them in a bargain or over a ledger. Think of what powers of
intense love, yea, of almost fearful devotion and energy, lie in us,
ay and come out of us, and then think how poor, how cold we are
here, and we may well be ashamed. It is as if a burning mountain
with its cataract of fire were suddenly quenched and locked in
everlasting frost, and all the flaming glory running down its
heaving sides turned into a slow glacier. There comes ice instead of
fire, frost instead of flame, snow instead of sparks. It is as if
some magician waved a wand and stiffened men into a paralysis.
Religion seems to numb men instead of inspiring them. It is an awful
thought of how they serve themselves and the world, how they can
love one another, how they can be stirred to noble enthusiasm, and
how little of all this ever comes to God.
Contrast the indifference of the men and the awfulness of the things
they are indifferent about. God--Christ--their souls--heaven--hell.
The grandest things men can think about, the mightiest realities in
the universe, the eternal, the most powerful, these it is which some
of you, seeing, see not.
Contrast men's indifference and the earnestness of the rest of the
creation. God rose early and sent His prophets. He so loved the
world that He gave His Son. Christ died, lives, works, rules,
expects, beseeches. Angels desire to look into the wonders that you
'seeing, see not'. What makes heaven fill with rapture, and flash
through all her golden glories with light, what makes hell look on
with the lurid scowl of baffled malignity, that is what _you_
are careless about. My friend, you and other men like you are the
only beings in the universe careless about the salvation of your
souls.