My faith has been no holiday or Sunday faith, but one for every-day
use; a faith to live and die in, not to argue or talk about. It has
had to stand the wear and tear of life; it was not got in prosperity.
It has had to carry me through years of anxious toil and small means,
through the long sicknesses of those dearer to me than my own life,
through deaths amongst them both sudden and lingering. Few men of my
age have had more failures of all kinds; no man has deserved them more,
by the commission of all kinds of blunders and errors, by evil tempers,
and want of faith, hope, and love.
Through all this it has carried me, and has risen up in me after every
failure and every sorrow, fresher, clearer, stronger. Why do I say
“_it_?” I mean He. He has carried me through it all; He who is your
Head and the Head of every man, woman, child, on this earth, or who
has ever been on it, just as much as he is my Head. And he will carry
us all through every temptation, trial, sorrow, we can ever have to
encounter, in this world or any other, if we will only turn to him, lay
hold of him, and cast them all upon him, as he has bidden us.
My younger brothers, you on whom the future of your country, under God,
at this moment depends, will you not try him? Is he not worth a trial?