mth of our love to our Master should
decline. There will be less spluttering and crackling when the fire
burns up; there may be fewer flames; but there will be a hotter glow of
ruddy, unflaming heat. That is what ought to be in our Christian
experience.

Nor can there be any doubt, I think, but that the partial obliteration
of the distinction between the Church and the world, and the decay of
the fervour of devotion which leads to it, are both to be traced to a
yet deeper cause, and that is the loss or diminution of actual
fellowship with Jesus Christ. It was that which made these early
disciples 'salt.' It was that which made them 'light.' It is that, and
that alone, which makes devotion burn fervid, and which makes characters
glow with the strange saintliness that rebukes iniquity, and works for
the purifying of the world. And so I would remind you that fellowship
with Jesus Christ is no vague exercise of the mind but is to be
cultivated by three things, which I fear me are becoming less and less
habitual amongst professing Christians:--Meditation, the study of the
Bible, private prayer. If you have not these--and you know best whether
you have them or not--no power in heaven or earth can prevent you from
losing the savour that makes you salt.

III. Now I come to the next point, and that is the solemn question: Is
there a possibility of re-salting the saltless salt, of restoring the
lost savour?

'Wherewithal shall it be salted?' says the Master. That is plain enough,
but do not let us push it too far. If the Church is meant for the
purifying of the world, and the Church itself needs purifying, is there
any power in the world that will do it? If the army joins the rebels, is
there any force that will bring back the army to submission? Our Lord is
speaking about ordinary means and agencies. He is saying in effect, if
the one thing that is intended to preserve the meat loses its power, is
there anything lying about that will salt that? So far, then, the answer
seems to be--No.

But Christ has no intention that these words should be pushed to the
extreme of asserting that if salt loses its savour, if a man loses the
pungency of his Christian life, he cannot win it back, by going again to
the source from which he received it at first. There is no such
implication in these words. There is no obstacle in the way of a
penitent returning to the fountain of all power and purity, nor of the
full restoration of the lost sav