But, on the other hand, do not adhere to any thing merely because it is old.  There is not a single enterprise of the Church or the world but has sometimes been scoffed at.  There was a time when men derided even Bible societies; and when a few young men met near a hay-stack in Massachusetts and organized the first missionary society ever organized in this country, there went laughter and ridicule all around the Christian Church.  They said the undertaking was preposterous.  And so also the work of Jesus Christ was assailed.  People cried out, “Who ever heard of such theories of ethics and government?  Who ever noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus has?” Ezekiel had talked of mysterious wings and wheels.  Here came a man from Capernaum and Gennesaret, and he drew his illustration from the lakes, from the sand, from the ravine, from the lilies, from the corn-stalks.  How the Pharisees scoffed!  How Herod derided!  How Caiaphas hissed!  And this Jesus they plucked by the beard, and they spat in his face, and they called him “this fellow!” All the great enterprises in and out of the Church have at times been scoffed at, and there have been a great multitude who have thought that the chariot of God’s truth would fall to pieces if it once got out of the old rut.

And so there are those who have no patience with anything like improvement in church architecture, or with anything like good, hearty, earnest church singing, and they deride any form of religious discussion which goes down walking among every-day men rather than that which makes an excursion on rhetorical stilts.  Oh, that the Church of God would wake up to an adaptability of work!  We must admit the simple fact that the churches of Jesus Christ in this day do not reach the great masses.  There are fifty thousand people in Edinburgh who never hear the Gospel.  There are one million people in London who never hear the Gospel.  There are at least three hundred thousand souls in the city of Brooklyn who come not under the immediate ministrations of Christ’s truth; and the Church of God in this day, instead of being a place full of living epistles, read and known of all men, is more like a “dead-letter” post-office.

“But,” say the people, “the world is going to be converted; you must be patient; the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of Christ,” Never, unless the Church of Jesus Christ puts on more speed and energy.  Instead of the Church converting the world, the world is converting the Church.  Here is a great fortress.  How shall it be taken?  An army comes and sits around about it, cuts off the supplies, and says:  “Now we will just wait until from exhaustion and starvation they will have to give up.”  Weeks and months, and perhaps a year, pass along, and finally the fortress surrenders through that starvation and exhaustion.  But, my friends, the fortresses of sin are never to be taken in that way.  If they are taken for God it will be by storm; you will have to bring up the great siege guns of the Gospel to the very wall and wheel the flying artillery into line, and when the armed infantry of heaven shall confront the battlements you will have to give the quick command, “Forward!  Charge!”