high pretensions, this Christian life that claims so much for itself, is
it competent for the task that it has undertaken to do? Can it meet all
these human problems, and relieve all these human miseries, and fulfil
all these human hopes? It is the old story over again, when John the
Baptist, puzzled in his prison, said to Jesus, "Art thou He that should
come? or look we for another?" It seems to me that the Christian Church
is hearing that cry in its ears to-day: "Art thou He that should come?"
Can you do this which the world unmistakably needs to be done?

Christian men, it is for us to give our bit of answer to that question.
It is for us, in whom the Christian Church is at this moment partially
embodied, to declare that Christianity, that the Christian faith, the
Christian manhood, can do that for the world which the world needs. You
say, "What can I do?" You can furnish one Christian life. You can
furnish a life so faithful to every duty, so ready for every service, so
determined not to commit every sin, that the great Christian Church
shall be the stronger for your living in it, and the problem of the
world be answered, and a certain great peace come into this poor,
perplexed phase of our humanity as it sees that new revelation of what
Christianity is. Yes, Christ can give the world the thing it needs in
unknown ways and methods that we have not yet begun to suspect.
Christianity has not yet been tried. My friends, no man dares to condemn
the Christian faith to-day, because the Christian faith has not been
tried. Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine,
an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain, not until they get
the grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and through
the lives of men, not until then does Christianity enter upon its true
trial and become ready to show what it can do. Therefore we struggle
against our sin in order that men may be saved around us, and not simply
that our own souls may be saved.