You may look at the prospect before you in all its reality: you may see how much must be given up, how much withstood, bow much, endured; how hard it is to alter old ways, not in itself only, but because the change attracts attention, and is received, it may be, with doubts as to its sincerity, with irony, and with sneers. There is all this before you: it cannot be denied; it must not be concealed. The way to life is not broad and easy; it is not that way which is most trodden. To pass from what we are to what we may be hereafter, from an earthly nature to an heavenly, cannot be an easy work, to be done at any time, with no effort, with no pain. It is the greatest work which is done in the whole world, it is the mightiest change; death and birth are, as it were, combined in it; but the Lord of birth and of death is at hand, to enable us to effect it. Think that this is so; and the more you feel how hard a task is set before you, the more you will be able to understand the language of joy and thankfulness with which the Scripture speaks of a human soul's redemption. This great work may be wrought for every soul here assembled; the want of sympathy in sacred and serious things may be changed to sympathy the most intense; the carelessness of fools may be changed into spiritual wisdom. It may be wrought for all; but it is more happy to think that it will be wrought for some;--for whom, no mortal eye or judgment can discern; but it will be wrought for some. If many should yield in despair to their enemy, yet some will resist him: if Christ be to many no more than foolishness, if his name convey nothing more than a vague sense of something solemn, which passes over the mind for an instant, and then vanishes, yet to some undoubtedly, he will be found to be the wisdom of God, and the power of God. There are some here, we may be quite sure, who will be witnesses for ever to all the world of men and angels, that what truly was impossible to nature, is possible to nature renewed and strengthened by grace.