We are living in a period in which there seems to be a general disinclination towards whatever is firm and precise in religious creed, feeling, and life. This may not be an altogether unhopeful state of things. Respect for truth may keep some minds silent concerning their beliefs, or at least may prevent them from avowing those beliefs too dogmatically. Anxiety and doubt may even in some cases be a sign of spiritual earnestness. Yet the tendency we speak of is on the whole to be deeply deplored. The truth is that the world has invaded us. Men shrink from great precision of conviction because they shrink from great consecration of life. How few the lives that are pre-eminently Christian, as Paul's was! On the other hand, our day is remarkable for its craving for mere religious excitement. In many cases, it is not so much the desire for truth, as the desire to be excited and pleased, that prevails. Neither of these tendencies can build up the faith which finds its grand avowal in the words: "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." The remedy for the state of things upon which I have touched cannot now be pointed out, because it would lead me away from my purpose. But I want to show the effect of it upon ourselves, and upon those who are without. There are certain aims common to the Christian life of all of us, and these cannot be reached so long as our faith lacks steadiness and stability. 1. Our great mission is to convert souls. We are avowedly the instruments of the Spirit of God in this momentous work. But what is the conversion of a soul? It is a radical change in its affections and its life. But this change never takes place apart from the influence of deep convictions. Men will not exchange the known for the unknown: actual life with its passions and its pleasures for the weak and cold abstractions of a faith with no precision in its principles, or for the worship of a God who is vague and problematical. How are we to succeed in winning souls to the truth we profess unless we can produce something which ought to convince them that we have the right of it? An unstable faith will be of little use to us here. There must be no hesitation in our avowal that our transition from the world to God is a blessed one. In other matters, a man of strong beliefs has half won us to his side. In religion, it is notoriously so. Paul's grand words have been a source of strength to us. Let us make them our own--the expression of our own faith--and they will become, through us, a source of strength to others. Let us have this same Christianity in its fulness and its power; and having it, let us avow it without timidity and without reserve.