David knew no fear when he went to meet Goliath because he had communed so much with God in the sheep pastures that God was more of a reality to him than Goliath was. So it must be with us, my dear brothers, or we lose this savour.
And that is what the text says. Let us read it again.
You may retain outward forms of religion and perform outward duties, but the unction and zeal and power will be gone and men will find it out and see it and say that you are no better than they are.
So the text says, "Good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men." And sad it is that more harm is done to the cause of Christianity by hypocritical or wicked or inconsistent professors of it than by all the Ingersolls in the world. Men look at the church to see what Christianity can do; and seeing it does nothing extraordinary in the way of making men better, they say it must be false. So it is the wicked and worldly professors of religion that make more infidels than anything else. Oh, let us be sure that we are not the darkness of the world. For if we are not its light, we become darkness.
The light in the lighthouse may be burning, but if the lights along the shore are not burning, too, the poor sailors may be lost.
"Brightly beams our Father's mercy
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore."
THE PRODIGAL SON,
HIS SIN, HIS WRETCHEDNESS AND HIS RECOVERY.
LUKE XV: 11-24.