Unhappily, there is a sad dearth of such reforming zeal in the Church, and in the world.  Even among those who in private lament prevailing evils there is a singular contentment and tolerance even of those which might be at once removed.  This is grievously common in large centres of population, where each individual feels insignificant among such vast multitudes, and loses the sense of individual responsibility in the vastness of the crowd which surrounds him.  How many professing Christians, for example, deplore drunkenness and impurity, while they shrink from any kind of open protest, and will not even trouble themselves to vote for representatives who will fight these evils; and if a preacher boldly denounces such iniquities they will even beg him to leave questions of that kind alone, and to confine himself to doctrinal exposition.  We are all too apt to forget that truth and righteousness, sobriety and holiness, are of God; and that the mission of Jesus Christ was to establish these, and to put away sin, even by the sacrifice of Himself.  The religion He exemplified was not to be ranged on the shelves of a library, but to prove itself a living force in politics, in business, and at home.  What was His own doctrine? “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”  Evils outside the Church, then, are to be combated, and not tolerated, by all true Christians—­even though in the result they are maligned as renegades to their party, or jeered at as Pharisees or Puritans.  The late Tom Hughes was quite right half a century ago, when he thus described to the lads before him the lot of a would-be reformer.

“If the angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interests which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with upholders of the said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people he has delivered.  They wouldn’t ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would be careful how they spoke of him in the palaver, or at their clubs.  What can we expect, then, when we have only poor gallant, blundering men like Garibaldi and Mazzini, and righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their armour, God knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their lounge-chairs, and having large balances at their bankers.  But you are brave, gallant boys, who have no balances or bankers, and hate easy-chairs.  You only want to have your heads set straight to take the right side; so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong, and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the weaker side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him.  If you cannot join him, and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for—­which is just what you have got to do for yourselves—­and so think and speak of him tenderly.”