It suggests a momentous question with regard to the spiritual fabric of our own personal lives, and also in regard to any spiritual enterprise in which we may be engaged: Have we dug deep enough and got down to the rock, or have we preferred quick results to solid foundations? Have we thought Christ’s words impossible of application, and so been content with something short of Him? If so, our work is doomed. It will not last. It will not stand the rain and the wind and the storm. We see how true this principle has proved in the history of the Church of Christ, which was built on the solid rock of His word and person. The Catholic Church through all vicissitudes has yet endured. Body after body naming the name of Christ have arisen and seemed to succeed better than the Church for a time, generally through some defect in her teaching or character: for it has been generally through the fault of the Church that they have arisen, and on the neglect of the Church’s duty that they have spread. But these bodies have not exhibited lasting power. Any great catastrophe which, as it were, shatters the structure of human society down to its foundations, brings to naught multitudes of enterprises which seemed successful. But there is one society which has exhibited a marked capacity for lasting, which after whatever vicissitudes has shown that it has still the power of recovery and persistence. This is that Church which is rooted on the word of Christ, which has the succession from His apostles, in which are administered His sacraments according to His appointment, which holds to His apostolic tradition, and appeals back to His sacred Scriptures. That is the test――to last! We must apply it to our own lives. We know that temptation is both thorough and searching, and that our moral and religious principles will in different ways be tested to the uttermost. To stand the test and carry our moral being through it all to victory――that is the one thing that matters; and to make this possible there is one sovereign expedient――that is thorough and whole-hearted conversion of our will, our intellect, our affection, to Christ and His word. “And it came to pass, when Jesus ended these words, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.”