ness of the whole as a light-bearer.

The glass of the lantern is so smoked and cobwebby that it is more
useless than useful to the light inside, and the crowd outside in the
dark. The uselessness threatens what usefulness is left. Smokiness is
contagious. Cobwebs grow thicker and hold more dust.

Two Churches are true and pure in the midst of sore opposition. Two are
corrupt in the very worst way. Three, including the leader, are orthodox
in form, but indifferent to Jesus Himself, or asleep, or dead; three
degrees of the same thing,--indifference, sleep, death.

In all of these five there are those who, like Ezekiel's companions,
"sigh and cry over the abominations that are going on," but they are
helpless to stay the sweep of the tide. They are the salt that is saving
the lump so far. Even Sodom would have been saved by ten righteous.

It is plainly said to the leader Church that it is no longer of use as a
candlestick, except a change come. It fails to give out the light. It is
being carried along, patiently borne with _for its own sake_. It is
failing at this point in the mission. The smoking flax sending out its
irritating smoke in place of clear light is not yet quenched. The Holy
Spirit life within is being sorely grieved, but is not yet put entirely
out.

And this is only one. Four others are plainly in much worse fix.
Five-sevenths are failing. That bit of preservative salt would seem to
be working to its full capacity.

This is the picture given us here by our Lord Himself. John would never
have dared make such a terrific arraignment of his own accord. It is a
picture of the whole Church at the beginning of the First century.

How is it at the beginning of the Twentieth? A thousand million people,
two-thirds of the race, pretty freely supplied with the light of western
oil and of gunpowder, with the help of the western sewing machine, and
with the guidance of western learning and skill, but to whom with minor
exceptions no scant ray of this light has yet gotten, these make answer.
That smokiness would seem to be rather dense.

The non-Christian crowds in so-called Christian lands, the overwhelming
majority, to whom the name of Jesus has no more practical meaning than
other foreign names, Shanghai, or Tokyo, or Calcutta,--these make
answer. The light doesn't seem to have been able to get through and out
much, even near the candlestick.

The Church itself, when it has sometimes forgotten its statistical