(_b_) Or is it that the fault is not so much intellectual as moral, and there is really something between you and CHRIST--something which is making your message appear unreal, because there is something in your life which contradicts your message? It has been a very blessed thing that a number of men have seen what that thing is during these Quiet Days. Is there anything in your life which contradicts your message? I remember hearing--it was not in this diocese--of a priest who did not dare to speak to his young men and boys about certain things, because his own conscience reproached him. That is the sort of thing that makes your message sound hollow when you get up to deliver it, in the pulpit or in the Bible-class. "Search me, O LORD, and seek the ground of my heart, prove me and examine my thoughts and see whether there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." This must be our prayer. If we say that to our people, we must say it to ourselves, and get it put right, though it may be like plucking out the right eye or cutting off the right hand. When it is put right your message will ring true again. (_c_) Or is it what you may call "middle-aged low spirits"? Is it something like accidie. Dr. Paget describes that dreariness of feeling that comes over some in middle age. "You cannot expect that amount of keenness from me at my age," a man says. I think of three men myself--Bishop Wilkinson, Bishop King and Canon Body--who were to the last day of their lives as keen as when they started. So when you think of these three men, it cannot be middle age or old age that really produce this accidie. I dare say it would be equally true of Mr. Simeon or Mr. Wesley, but I only happen to know of these three men, who were like fathers to me. They were as keen up to the day that they died as ever they were in their lives. Bishop Wilkinson's last words before he died--an address to a committee of his Prayer Union in his diocese--were the same burning words that had fired the rich people of Eaton Square and the miners of the North.