(4) Then notice, fourthly, the abandonment of the messenger. I am sure St. Paul really loved the picture of the runner. Do you notice he is always going back to it? The runner flung aside his cloak, with his eyes fixed on the goal, like Pheidippides the messenger; that is exactly what he did: he flung everything away for speed and alertness, in order to be there in time--the one thing that mattered. Do you not think that it may be true that we have become too comfortable as messengers? May it not be that we have lost the alertness and keenness and the mobility of the messenger? We have just settled down into our comfortable homes and creature comforts. They hinder our movements, and we do not run with the alertness of a messenger of GOD. Of course, we have to be part of a great system, to have parishes, to settle down in a certain place, and to secure that no one is neglected in the parish. But we must remember, we clergy of the Church of England, that we are not working for a particular parish or country only, but for the whole world. We must not rest content in being a stolid yeomanry, who can only fight in our own country, but we are to be a mobile alert force for the conversion of the world. We ought to be entirely and absolutely independent of our comfortable homes, of our comfortable way of life. It is good to go into camp and be content to stay there for a couple of months. We ought to feel that having food and raiment, with these we shall have enough. That love of comfort is a great danger; it greatly hampers us in our task and in our alertness as messengers.