communion such as shall help shy and tender graces to unfold
themselves, and woo out, by the encouragement of example, the lowest
and the least perfect to lofty holiness and consecration like the
Master's.

And if I am speaking to any in this congregation who hold aloof from
Christian fellowship for more or less sufficient reasons, let me
press upon them, in one word, that if they are conscious of a
possession, however imperfect, of that incipient salvation, their
place is thereby determined, and they are doing wrong if they do not
connect themselves with some Christian Communion, and stand forth as
members of Christ's Church.

And now one last word. I have tried to show you that salvation, in
the New Testament, is regarded as a process. The opposite thing is a
process too. There is a very awful contrast in one of Paul's
Epistles. 'The preaching of the Cross is to them _who are in the act
of perishing_ foolishness; unto us who are _being saved_, it is the
power of God.' These two processes start, as it were, from the same
point, one by slow degrees and almost imperceptible motion, rising
higher and higher, the other, by slow degrees and almost unconscious
descent, sliding steadily and fatally downward ever further and
further. And my point now is that in each of us one or other of these
processes is going on. Either you are slowly rising or you are
slipping down. Either a larger measure of the life of Christ, which
is salvation, is passing into your hearts, or bit by bit you are
dying like some man with creeping paralysis that begins at the
extremities, and with fell, silent, inexorable footstep, advances
further and further towards the citadel of the heart, where it lays
its icy hand at last, and the man is dead. You are either 'being