Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/50

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deliver us from the false heaven of ease and self-indulgence, which is as bad as any other kind of hell. Christ came to save us from that.

There is one other way in which we can answer this call, and can deliver ourselves from the curse of smooth living. Around about us on every side there are causes waiting for what men and women can do for them. I do not mean crosses in any great, general, organized sense, in which we send our five, our twenty-five or our hundred dollars to some society and think we have, in that way, carried all the cross that Christ means to have us carry. We cannot fulfill Christ's command by paying an organization to carry a cross for us. All the work they do must be done, and it must be supported. Millions of dollars that are not being given now ought to be given. But what Christ is waiting for also and what we have got to do if we are to have the satisfaction of the enduring life is to find each of us for himself some true cross of personal service. There are men and women around us who are waiting for some touch of sympathy, some kindness, some unflinching word of ours to them that shall mean the awakening of their own discouraged or sleeping souls, that they may come out to live. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me."

One of the saddest things in the world to-day is the principle under which those are living who