At certain times, of which this is one, extraordinary efforts are made. Fear for the deserters, the half-hearted, the temporisers, the merely curious. Many look anxiously, but cannot find . The preparation must be complete before the step is gained. This is an unalterable law.
Fitness precedes progression.
Patience is required. The obstacles from internal dissention, from the impossibility of bringing home evidence to many, from prejudice, from many other causes, seems almost invincible. You know not what they are compared with what we have had to endure in times past. Had you lived on earth in the later days of Rome's imperial sway, when everything spiritual had fled in horror from a realm steeped in debauchery, sensuality, and all that is base and bad, you would have known then what the banded powers of darkness can effect. Faithlessness there was indeed, and worse.