Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/33

 very considerably augmented, and are insufficiently supplied with churches and ministers. Their wants, indeed, are less urgent than those which have been detailed, and yet, if custom had not reconciled us to these and worse things, we should surely feel them to be deeply impressive. We have become familiarized with awful facts, and we can speak of the spiritual destitution, of hundreds, or thousands, or millions, with as little emotion as a conqueror who numbers his army, and regards them not as so many individual responsible immortal beings, but as counters in the great game which he is playing. Let us divest ourselves of these habits of thought, and estimate, by the standard of God's word, the worth of a single soul. Let us consider how great it seems to us even now, in the chamber of death, or by the side of the grave, and then let us attempt to realize something of that value which it will assume in the great and dreadful day of judgment. These are the units of which our account is made up. It is of such interests that we speak, when we estimate the number of our countrymen, who live and die in habitual forgetfulness of God, and neglect of His gospel. If they could be told by hundreds, by tens, or by units, it were no light evil when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary.

And what is the case in the larger towns of our