I am afraid a great many of us would rather have tried to reconcile
our asking for a band of horsemen with our professed trust in God's
hand; and there would have been plenty of excuses very ready about
using means as well as exercising faith, and not being called upon to
abandon advantages, and not pushing a good principle to Quixotic
lengths, and so on, and so on. But whatever truth there is in such
considerations, at any rate we may well learn the lesson of this
story--to be true to our professed principles; to beware of making our
religion a matter of words; to live, when the time for putting them
into practice comes, by the maxims which we have been forward to
proclaim when there was no risk in applying them; and to try sometimes
to look at our lives with the eyes of people who do not share our
faith, that we may bring our actions up to the mark of what they
expect of us. If 'the Church' would oftener think of what 'the world'
looks for from it, it would seldomer have cause to be ashamed of the
terrible gap between its words and its deeds.

Especially in regard to this matter of trust in an unseen Hand, and
reliance on visible helps, we all need to be very rigid in our
self-inspection. Faith in the good hand of God upon us for good should
often lead to the abandonment, and always to the subordination, of
material aids. It is a question of detail, which each man must settle
for himself as each occasion arises, whether in any given case
abandonment or subordination is our duty. This is not the place to
enter on so large and difficult a question. But, at all events, let us
remember, and try to work into our own lives, that principle which the
easy-going Christianity of this day has honeycombed with so many
exceptions, that it scarcely has any whole surface left at all; that
the absolute surrender and forsaking of external helps and goods is