To begin, then, let us remember what these men were when Christians; and we shall be better able to realise what they are now. They were men who believed firmly in the supreme and solemn importance of life, in the privilege that it was to live, despite all temporal sorrow. They had a rule of conduct which would guide them, they believed, to the true end of their being--to an existence satisfying and excellent beyond anything that imagination could suggest to them; they had the dread of a corresponding ruin to fortify themselves in their struggle against the wrong; and they had a God ever present, to help and hear, and take pity on them. And yet even thus, selfishness would beset the most unselfish, and weariness the most determined. How hard the battle was, is known to all; it has been the most prominent commonplace in human thought and language. The constancy and the strength of temptation, and the insidiousness of the arguments it was supported by, has been proverbial. To explain away the difference between good and evil, to subtly steal its meaning out of long-suffering and self-denial, and, above all, to argue that in sinning '_we shall not surely die_,' a work which was supposed to belong especially to the devil, has been supposed to have been accomplished by him with a success continually irresistible. What, then, is likely to be the case now, with men who are still beset with the same temptations, when not only they have no hell to frighten, no heaven to allure, and no God to help them; but when all the arguments that they once felt belonged to the father of lies, are pressed on them from every side as the most solemn and universal truths? Thus far the result has been a singular one. With an astonishing vigour the moral impetus still survives the cessation of the forces that originated and sustained it; and in many cases there is no diminution of it traceable, so far as action goes. This, however, is only true, for the most part, of men advanced in years, in whom habits of virtue have grown strong, and whose age, position, and circumstances secure them from strong temptation. To see the real work of positive thought we must go to younger men, whose characters are less formed, whose careers are still before them, and on whom temptation of all kinds has stronger hold. We shall find such men with the sense of virtue equally vivid in them, and the desire to practise it probably far more passionate; but the effect of positive thought on them we shall see to be very different.