t and the
surrounding atmosphere will gain it. There are two ways by which you
equalise the temperature of a hotter and a colder body: the one is by
the hot one getting cold, and the other is by the cold one getting hot.
If you are not heating the world, the world is freezing you. Every man
influences all men round him, and receives influences from them, and if
there be not more exports than imports, if there be not more influences
and mightier influences raying out from him than are coming into him, he
is a poor creature, and at the mercy of circumstances. 'Men must either
be hammers or anvil';--must either give blows or receive them. I am
afraid that a great many of us who call ourselves Christians get a great
deal more harm from the world than we ever dream of doing good to it.
Remember this, 'you are the salt of the earth,' and if you do not salt
the world, the world will rot you.

Is there any difference between your ideal of happiness and the
irreligious one? Is there any difference between your notion of what is
pleasure, and the irreligious one? Is there any difference in your
application of the rules of morality to daily life, any difference in
your general way of looking at things from the way of the ungodly world?
Yes, or No? Is the salt being infected by the carcass, or is it
purifying the corruption? Answer the question, brother, as before God
and your own conscience.

Then there is another thing. There can be no doubt but that all round
and shared by us, there are instances of the cooling of the fervour of
Christian devotion. That is the reason for the small distinction in
character and conduct between the world and the Church to-day. An Arctic
climate will not grow tropical fruits, and if the heat have been let
down, as it has been let down, you cannot expect the glories of
character and the pure unworldliness of conduct that you would have had
at a higher temperature. Nor is there any doubt but that the present
temperature is, with some of us, a distinct _loss_ of heat. It was
not always so low. The thermometer has gone down.

There are, no doubt, some among us who had once a far more vigorous
Christian life than they have to-day; who were once far more aflame with
the love of God than they are now. And although I know, of course, that
as years go on emotion will become less vivid, and feeling may give
place to principle, yet I know no reason why, as years go on, fervour
should become less, or the war