I marked out for myself a straight talk, when you asked me to come to you,—and no preaching. The Lord knew what He was about when He made me a reporter, a gatherer of facts, and not a preacher: He makes no mistakes. But brethren! If it had been different—if I had been worthy——Oh! when I look upon you young men preparing to take up His work in the world—what can you not do if you but believe that your cause is His! What is there you cannot do? In my day, I have seen the merest handful of men and women, fewer in number than you can count upon the fingers of your two hands, but standing firmly for the right, pull my city upward, upward towards the light,—even in the worst of its bad days, and in spite of them. I tell you now that if all of you here, going out to your work as you believe with the apostolic charge upon you, were to go determined to follow in the apostles’ steps, looking neither to the right nor to the left—to the living that is to keep you, nor to what expediency whispers—never losing hope, never hanging your heads, not being afraid of being called optimists—Christ was the great optimist of all ages; He never lost hope even of us—what could you not do? I learned something when I was last in Denmark, where they make butter for a living and where they have two kinds of Christians, the happy Christians, as they are called, and the “hell preachers”; I learned there that, if you want good butter, you must buy it of the happy Christians; they make the best. So it is in all things in the world; the happy Christians made it go round. I tell you, brethren, that if all of you here now, or the half of you, or the fourth of you, were to go out to your work in that spirit, in the spirit of a dear old Lutheran woman I once knew who said on her deathbed, “I know but Him and Him crucified; if there is anything else I should know I am afraid I don’t,”—if you were to go forth to your work in that spirit, letting all else go, Christian unity would come on the wave of an irresistible flood; so does the world hunger for the message you carry. Suppose you do not live to see it come? We have so little time that we are always in a hurry, but _He_ has all the time there is. Why should I let the fact discourage me that wrongs are not all righted at once? It is nineteen hundred years since Christ came to a sin-ridden world to free it from bondage, and it is sin-ridden yet. Why should I think that I should be able to do better in my little time? I have a friend who, for many years, was connected with the naval observatory in Washington. A couple of years ago, when he was retired, I said to him that I always looked upon an astronomer with a kind of awe,—he seemed to me to be so near to the Almighty, at his elbow seeing Him work, as it were; and my friend smiled.