philosophies, bitter hatred and prejudice, material power and wealth.
These were the brazen armour of Goliath, and this little David went
cheerily down into the valley with five pebble stones in a leathern
wallet, and was quite sure how it was going to end. And it ended as
he expected. His Gospel shook the kingdom of the Roman, and cast it
in another mould.

And there are temptations, plenty of them, for us, dear friends,
to-day, to bate our confidence. The drift of what calls itself
influential opinion is anti-supernatural, and we all are conscious of
the presence of that element all round about us. It tells with
special force upon our younger men, but it affects us all. In this
day, when a large portion of the periodical press, which does the
thinking for most of us, looks askance at these truths, and when, on
the principle that in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is
the king, popular novelists become our theological tutors, and when
every new publishing season brings out a new conclusive destruction
of Christianity, which supersedes last season's equally complete
destruction, it is hard for some of us to keep our flags flying. The
ice round about us will either bring down the temperature, or, if it
stimulates us to put more fuel on the fire, perhaps the fire may melt
it. And so the more we feel ourselves encompassed by these
temptations, the louder is the call to Christian men to cast
themselves back on the central verities, and to draw at first hand
from them the inspiration which shall be their safety. And how is
that to be done? Well, there are many ways by which thoughtful, and
cultivated, students may do it. But may I venture to deal here rather
with ways which all Christian people have open before them? And I am
bold to say that the way to be sure of 'the power of God unto
salvation' is to submit ourselves continually to its cleansing and