the expression, a better brand of us. To secure ten men of an
improved type would be better than if we had ten thousand more of
the average Christians distributed all over the world. There is
such a thing in the evangelistic sense as winning the whole world
and losing our own soul. And the first consideration of our
own life--our own spiritual relations to God--our own likeness to
Christ. And I am anxious, briefly, to look at the right and the
wrong way of becoming like Christ--of becoming better men: the
right and the wrong way of sanctification.

Let me begin by naming, and in part discarding some processes in
vogue already for producing better lives. These processes are far
from wrong; in their place they may even be essential. One ventures
to disparage them only because they do not turn out the most perfect
possible work.

1. The first imperfect method is to rely on

Resolution.

In will power, in mere spasms of earnestness, there is no salvation.
Struggle, effort, even agony, have their place in Christianity, as
we shall see; but this is not where they come in.

In mid-Atlantic the Etruria, in which I was sailing, suddenly
stopped. Something had gone wrong with the engines. There were
five hundred able-bodied men on board the ship. Do you think that
if we had gathered together and pushed against the mast we could
have pushed it on?