For instance, two men may be standing on the borders of a precipice: below, there is the deep ravine; opposite, the other side of the mountain. They look far down and see rough, ragged points of rocks, and far, far below, the floods boiling white with foam. Over this abyss there is but one slight, frail bridge, and that is the trunk of a single tree. One man says, “Since we must pass over, I will precede. I know that I can go; I _will_ go.” That man has faith in himself. He plants his feet firmly; he looks upward, and passes safely over. The second says, “I do not believe that I can go; I fear I shall fall.” He totters on, trembling, until he reaches the middle, and then cries out, “O Lord, Lord, help me!” So surely as he utters that cry, faithless in his own power, that man must fall. And thus it is with human souls. They are standing here, in earthly life, gazing across the great abyss of the Future. It is dark and terrible below. They cannot clearly understand what fate awaits them, but they see the strait and narrow way before them. If a man plants his feet firmly, and says, “I can, and I will,” it is the greatest possible acknowledgement of his faith in God. That man has stepped upon the threshold of the mysteries of Godliness; those mysteries will be made clearer and more apparent to his soul as he advances. But if, with craven soul, he says, “I know not what to do. I will wait for God’s providences, and let them come as they may; for of myself I can do nothing,”--if he trust to the vicarious atonement and an external Deity, and does nothing for his own salvation,--if, in making oral prayers to the Lord of the Universe, he forgets to “worship God in spirit,” and loses the vitalizing consciousness of the Divine within his own being, that man will assuredly err; he will continually go astray, for externally he has “the form of Godliness,” but practically and internally he denies “the power thereof.”