But, further, and more particularly, I do not think that I am unduly
reading too much meaning into this story, if I ask you to put emphasis
upon one word, 'Launch out into the _deep_.' As long as you keep
pottering along, a boat's length from the shore, you will only catch
little fishes. The big ones, and the heavy takes are away out yonder.
Go out there, if you want to get them. Which, being translated, is
this--The same spirit of daring enterprise, which is a condition of
success in secular matters, is no less potent a factor in the success
of Christian men in their enterprises for Jesus Christ. As long as we
keep Him down, within the limits of use and wont, and are horribly
afraid of anything that our great-grandfathers did not use to do,
there will be very few fish in the bottom of the boat.

Oh, brethren! if one thinks of the world into which it has been
God's providence to put us, a world all seething with new
aspirations and unrest--if we think of the condition of the great
city in which we live, which is only a specimen of the cities of
England, and of the tragical insufficiency of Christian enterprise
and effort, as compared with the overwhelming masses of the
community, surely, surely, there is nothing more wanted to make
Christian people wake up from their old jog-trot habits, and cast
themselves with new earnestness, new daring and enterprise, into
forms of service which conscience and sober wisdom may approve. Of
course, I do not forget that any such new methods must each approve
themselves at the tribunal of the Christian consciousness. It is no
part of my business here to descend into details and particulars,
but I do want to lay on my own heart, and especially on the hearts
of the members of the church of which I have the honour to be the
pastor, and also upon all other Christian people whom my voice may