a
matter of fact probably most deaths, spiritually, are gradual
dissolutions of the last class rather than rash suicides of the first.

This, then, is the effect of neglecting salvation from the side of
salvation itself; and the conclusion is that from the very nature of
salvation escape is out of the question. Salvation is a definite
process. If a man refuse to submit himself to that process, clearly he
cannot have the benefits of it. _As many as received Him to them gave
He_ power _to become the sons of God._ He does not avail himself of this
power. It may be mere carelessness or apathy. Nevertheless the neglect
is fatal. He cannot escape because he will not.

Turn now to another aspect of the case--to the effect upon the soul
itself. Neglect does more for the soul than make it miss salvation. It
despoils it of its capacity for salvation. Degeneration in the spiritual
sphere involves primarily the impairing of the faculties of salvation
and ultimately the loss of them. It really means that the very soul
itself becomes piecemeal destroyed until the very capacity for God and
righteousness is gone.

The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacity for God. It is like a
curious chamber added on to being, and somehow involving being, a
chamber with elastic and contractile walls, which can be expanded, with
God as its guest, illimitably, but which without God shrinks and
shrivels until every vestige of the Divine is gone, and God's image is
left without God's Spirit. One cannot call what is left a soul; it is a
shrunken, useless organ, a capacity sentenced to death by disuse, which
droops as a withered hand by the side, and cumbers nature like a rotted
branch. Nature has her revenge upon neglect as well as upon
extravagance. Misuse, with her, is as mortal a sin as abuse.

There are certain burrowing animals--the mole for instance--which have
taken to spending their lives beneath the surface of the ground. And
Nature has taken her revenge upon them in a thoroughly natural way--she
has closed up their eyes. If they mean to live in darkness, she argues,
eyes are obviously a superfluous function. By neglecting them these
animals made it clear they do not want them. And as one of Nature's
fixed principles is that nothing shall exist in vain, the eyes are
presently taken away, or reduced to a rudimentary state. There are
fishes also which have had to pay the same terrible forfeit for having
made their abode in dark caverns