this appeal: Do you see to it that, so far as your influence extends,
this community of ours be such as that half-dead Christians will
never think of coming near us, and those whose religion is tepid will
be repelled from us, but that they who love the Lord Jesus Christ
with earnest devotion and lofty consecration, and seek to live
unworldly and saint-like lives, shall recognise in us men like-
minded, and from whom they may draw help. I beseech you--if you will
not misunderstand the expression--make your communion such that it
will repel as well as attract; and that people will find nothing here
to draw them to an easy religion of words and formalism, beneath
which all vermin of worldliness and selfishness may lurk, but will
recognise in us a church of men and women who are bent upon holiness,
and longing for more and more conformity to the divine Master.

Now, if all this be true, it is possible for worldly and stagnant
communities calling themselves 'Churches' to thwart Christ's purpose,
and to make it both impossible and undesirable that He should add to
them souls for whom He has died. It is a solemn thing to feel that we
may clog Christ's chariot-wheels, that there may be so little
spiritual life in us, as a congregation, that, if I may so say, He
dare not intrust us with the responsibility of guarding and keeping
the young converts whom He loves and tends. We may not be fit to be
trusted with them, and that may be why we do not get them. It may not
be good for them that they should be dropped into the refrigerating
atmosphere of such a church, and that may be why they do not come.

Depend upon it, brethren, that, far more than my preaching, your
lives will determine the expansion of this church of ours. And if my
preaching is pulling one way and your lives the other, and I have
half an hour a week for talk and you have seven days for