of an immediate and divine answer? Why is our attitude at our work so
destitute of practical enthusiasm? Because we, too, are not lifting our
eyes to the hills. We are looking for nothing but little things, and
therefore we see nowhere any threshold or field worthy of God. How can the
sense that the living God is near to our life, that He is interested in it
and willing to help it, survive in us, if our life be full of petty things?
Absorption in trifles, attention only to the meaner aspects of life, is
killing more faith than is killed by aggressive unbelief. For if all a man
sees of life be his own interests, if all he sees of home be its comforts,
if all he sees of religion be the outlines of his own denomination, the
complexion of his preacher's doctrine, the agreeableness and taste of his
fellow-worshippers--to such a man God must always seem far away, for in
those things there is no call upon either mind or heart to feel God near.
But if, instead of limiting ourselves to trifles, we resolutely and 'with
pious obstinacy' lift our eyes to the hills--whether to those great
mountain-tops of history which the dawn of the new heavens has already
touched, periods of faith and action that signal to our more forward but
lower ages the promise of His coming; or to the great essentials of human
experience that at sunrise, noon and evening remain the same through all
ages; or to the ideals of truth and justice; to the possibilities of human
nature about us; to the stature of the highest characters within our sight;
to the bulk and sweep of the people's life; to the destinies of our own
nation that still rise high above all party dust and strife--then we shall
see thresholds prepared for a divine arrival, conditions upon which we can
realise God acting. Our hope will spring, an eager sentinel, as if she
already heard upon them all the footfalls of His coming.

These lines may meet the eyes of some who have lost their faith, and are
sorry and weary to have lost it. Whether the blame be outside yourselves,
in the littleness of many of the prevailing aspects of religious life, and