268 TEE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



many of the congregation have gone to the church 

 around the other corner, which, is mainly a cluster of 

 associations, haying excellent names, and useful for 

 almost every purpose except building up a manly, 

 rugged, heroic, godlike character. The minister 

 there, they will tell you, preaches delightful sermons. 

 They make you "feel so good." He annihilates pan- 

 theism, and his denunciations of materialism are elo- 

 quent in the extreme. But his incarnations of materi- 

 alism are Huxley and Danvin, and to the uncharitable 

 he seems to almost carefully avoid any language which 

 might seem to reflect upon the dollar- and place-wor- 

 ship of some of the occupants of his front pews. Now, 

 I am not here to defend Mr. Huxley or Mr. Darwin. 

 Withstand them to the face wherever they are to be 

 blamed. And for some utterances they are undoubt- 

 edly to be blamed, honest souls as they were. But I 

 for one cannot help feeling that there is among the 

 "dwellers in Jerusalem' a materialism of the heart 

 which is indefinitely worse than any intellectual heresy. 

 When you hit at the one heresy strike hard at the 

 other also. 



Many will have left your little church of Smyrna. 

 It had to be so. For the divine sifting process, which 

 is natural selection on its highest plane, has not ceased 

 to work. It must and shall still go on ; it cannot 

 be otherwise. Has the great principle ceased to be 

 true in modern history that " though the number of 

 the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a 

 remnant shall be saved ? ' 



But do not be discouraged. Preach Christ and a 

 heroic Christianity. Do not be afraid to demand 

 great things of your people. Remember that Ananias 



