Let us learn, then, to respect ourselves. Let us not take the world’s tinsel for wealth, and spend our time, like the man in Bunyan’s dream, scraping with “the muck-rake” while the crown of life shines above our head. The riches of a Church--nay, of any human community--lies not in its moneyed resources, but in the men and women that compose it, in their godlike attributes of mind and heart, in their knowledge, their zeal, their love to God and man, in the purity, the gentleness, the truthfulness and courage and fidelity that are found amongst them. These are the qualities which give distinction to human life, and are beautiful in the eyes of God and holy angels. “Man that is in honour and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.” III. One thing more we need to understand, or what we have seen already will be of little practical avail. We may see glorious visions, we may cherish high aspirations; and they may prove to be but the dreams of vanity. Nay, it is conceivable that God Himself might have wealth invested in our nature, a treasure beyond price, shipwrecked and sunk irrecoverably through our sin. What means exist for realizing this inheritance? what power is there at work to recover these forfeited hopes, and that glory of God of which we have come so miserably short? The answer lies in the apostle’s words: “That ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us that believe,”--a power measured by “the energy of the might of His strength[67] which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.” This is the power that we have to count upon, the force that is yoked to the world’s salvation and is at the service of our faith. Its energy has turned the tide and reversed the stream of nature--in the person of Jesus Christ and in the course of human history. It has changed death to life. Above all, it certifies the forgiveness of sin and releases us from its liabilities; it transforms the law of sin and death into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We preachers hear it said sometimes: “You live in a speculative world. Your doctrines are ideal and visionary,--altogether too high for men as they are and the world as we find it. Human nature and experience, the coarse realities of life are all against you.”