defeatism chill your ministry. Refuse to listen to the lying voices which insinuate that this is an unpropitious hour for the proclamation of the faith. You are to be the heralds of a religion which once saw the blackest, most desperately unpropitious hour in history—the hour of the crucifying of Jesus—turned into history's crowning glory and mankind's brightest hope. Go forth, then, in the heartening assurance that this present cataclysmic hour is alive with spiritual potentialities.
To take but one striking line of evidence, there is the new demand, particularly amongst youth, for a cause worthy of sacrifice or devotion, the new urge towards complete self-commitment. It will be tragic if the Church cannot take that generous impulse and baptize it into Christ. If you are wise, you will not in your preaching mask or minimize the overwhelming, absolute nature of Christ's demand. Men are ready for a Leader who will unhesitatingly claim the last ounce of His followers' courage and fidelity. Field-Marshal Wavell has told, in his notable lectures entitled Generals and Generalship, the story of how Napoleon, when an artillery officer at the siege of Toulon, built a battery in such an exposed position that he was told he would never find men to man it. But Napoleon had a sure instinct for what was required. He put up a placard—"The battery of men without fear": and it was always manned. This is no time to be offering a reduced, milk-and-water religion. Far too often the world has been presented with a mild
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