a very amiable and pleasant one; you do many things very well; you
cultivate congenial virtues, and you abhor uncongenial vices; but you
never think about God; and you have made absolutely no preparation
whatever for stepping into the scene in which you know that you are to
live.

Well, you may be a very wise man, a student with high aims, cultivated
understanding, and all the rest of it. I want to know whether, taking
into account all that you are, and your inevitable connection with
God, and your certain death and certain life in a state of
retribution--I want to know whether we should call your conduct sanity
or insanity? Which?

Take another picture. Here is a man that believes--really
believes--the articles of the Christian creed, and in some measure has
received them into his heart and life. He believes that Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, died for him upon the Cross, and yet his heart has but
the feeblest tick of pulsating love in answer. He believes that prayer
will help a man in all circumstances, and yet he hardly ever prays. He
believes that self-denial is the law of the Christian life, and yet he
lives for himself. He believes that he is here as a 'pilgrim' and as a
'sojourner,' and yet his heart clings to the world, and his hand would
fain cling to it, like that of a drowning man swept over Niagara, and
catching at anything on the banks. He believes that he is sent into
the world to be a 'light' of the world, and yet from out of his
self-absorbed life there has hardly ever come one sparkle of light
into any dark heart. And that is a picture, not exaggerated, of the
enormous majority of professing Christians in so-called Christian
lands. And I want to know whether we shall call that sanity or
insanity?