salt to
keep our bodies from decaying.

Whose work is that? The devil's. But whose _fault_ is it? Do you
suppose that the devil has any right in you, any power in you, who have
been washed in the waters of baptism and redeemed by Christ from the
service of the devil, and signed with His Cross on your foreheads,
_unless you give him power_? Not he. Men's sins open the door to the
devil, and when he is in, he will soon trample down the good seed that is
springing up, and stamp the mellow soil as hard as iron, so that nothing
but his own seeds can grow there, and so keep off the dews of God's
spirit, and the working of God's own gospel from making any impression on
that hardened stupified soil.

Alas! poor soul. And thy misery is double, because thou knowest not that
thou art miserable; and thy misery is treble, because thou hast brought
it on thyself!

My friends--there is an ancient fable of the Jews, which, though it is
not true, yet has a deep and holy meaning, and teaches an awful lesson.

There lived, says an ancient Jewish Scribe, by the shores of the Dead
Sea, a certain tribe of men, utterly given up to pleasure and
covetousness, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride
of life. To them the prophet Moses was sent, and preached to them,
warning them of repentance and of judgment to come--trying to awaken
their souls to high and holy thoughts, and bring them back to the thought
of God and heaven. And they, poor fools, listened to Him, admired his
preaching, agreed that it all sounded very good--but that he went too
far--that it was too difficult--that their present way of life was very
pleasant--that they saw no such great need of change, and so on, one
excuse after another, till they began to be tired of Moses, and gave him
to understand that he was impertinent, troublesome--that they could see
nothing wise in him--nothing great; how could they? So Moses went his
way, and left them to go theirs. And long after, when some travellers
came by, says the fable, they found these foolish people were all changed
into dumb beasts; what they had tried to be, now they really were. They
had made no use of their souls, and now they had lost them; they had
given themselves up to folly, and now folly had taken to her own; they
had fancied, as people do every day, that this world is a great
play-ground, wherein every one has to amuse himself as he likes best, or
at all events a great shop and gamblin