3. Christianity is these and a great deal more. Mere belief would make religion a mere theology. Mere emotion would make it mere excitement. The true divine idea of it is a life; doing his will, not indolently sighing to do it, and then lamenting that we do it not; but the thing itself in actual achievement, from day to day, from month to month, from year to year. Thus religion rises on us in its own imperial majesty. It is no mere delight of the understanding in the doctrines of our faith; no mere excitement of the sensibilities, now harrowed by fear, and now jubilant in hope; but a warfare and a work, a warfare against sin, and a work with God. Religion is not an entertainment, but a service. We are to set before us the perfect standard, and then struggle to shape our lives to it. Personal sanctity must be made a business of.[A] [Footnote A: This page is mainly a series of quotations from Dr. R.D. Hitchcock's sermon on "Religion, the Doing of God's Will."] A little more than thirty years ago a regiment was sent home from the Army of the Potomac to enforce the draft after the riots in this city. Some of you may picture to yourselves a thousand men with silk banners and gold lace and bright uniforms, resplendent in the sunshine. You could not make a worse mistake. First in that gray early morning came two old flags, so torn by shot and shell that there was hardly enough left of them to tell whether the State flag was that of Massachusetts or Virginia. And behind these came scant three hundred men. All the rest were sleeping between Washington and Richmond, some on almost every battle-field. The uniforms were old and faded from sun and rain. Only gun-barrel and bayonet were bright. And the men were scarred and tired and foot-sore, haggard from hard fighting and long, swift marches. For these men had been trained to be hurried back and forth behind the long line of battle, that they might be hurled into it wherever the need was greatest. I do not suppose that one of them could have delivered a fourth-of-July oration on Patriotism. They were trained not to talk, but to obey orders. But they had stood in the "bloody angle" at Spottsylvania all day and all night; and in the gray dawn of the next morning, when strength and courage are always at ebb, faint and exhausted, their last cartridge shot away, had sprung forward at the command of their colonel to make a last desperate, forlorn defence with the bayonet against the advancing enemy. Numbers do not count against men like these. What made them such invincible heroes? It was mainly the resolute will and long training to obey orders. A Christian should never forget that he is a soldier in the army of the Lord of Hosts; that enlistment is easy and quickly accomplished; but that the training is long, and that he must learn, above all, to "endure hardness."