Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/61

 whether we will make our nation an excellency upon the earth, a joy of many generations; by taking God at His word, receiving in faith what He has spoken, and giving liberally to Him of our worldly substance; or whether we will cast His words behind us, and trust to our silver and gold for our private and national prosperity.

And is it visionary to expect that men will awake to a sense of such responsibility, of interests so enormous? Surely although man's corruption be strong, and although the world has mighty power, yet the commands, and the promise, and the grace of God, are mightier, and must prevail. When He gave the word, the barren rock opened and sent forth streams for the thirst of His people; and the power of that word is not diminished, that it should not work marvels now as of old. For moral miracles the time is never past. Neither is it a new or unexampled work of grace for which we ask: we have but to pray with the prophet, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old;" for our faith and hope have the encouragement of experience, the experience of ages, to the power of the grace of God. Let us look through our own favoured land, and where does the eye not meet the parish church, and all the blessed associations which float around it? And once these were not. Even if it should be thought that we still need as many churches as already exist; the