1 J. Kelman, The Road, i. 100. a W. L. Watkinion.
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purity. A peacock, the symbol of eternity, is seen sculptured on the walls, while over the window of the torture-chamber there is engraven a cross.^
3. The , symptom) which is singled out in the letter to the Church as characterizing its condition is what we should call slackness, ineffectiveness. "I have found no works of thine fulfilled before my God." Works were not wanting ; but all alike were branded with incompleteness, perfunctoriness, unreality. There had been a serious slackening of moral fibre, an inclination to slur over the distinctions between the standard of Christ and the standard of the world, and to fling away some of the distinctive practices and forms of self-denial which were provided as safe- guards of the specifically Christian character. Sardis had been too much for them; its atmosphere of self-pleasing, of self- indulgence, had poisoned the well-springs of their faith, making it sickly, feeble, and ineffective. Instead of their overcoming the world, the world had overcome them.
The Church in Sardis had no heresies needing correction. It had not life enough to produce even such morbid secretions. Neither weeds nor flowers grow in winter. There may be a lower depth than the condition of things when people are all thinking, and some of them thinking wrongly, about Christian truth. Better the heresies of Ephesus and Thyatira than the acquiescent deadness of Sardis. It had no immoralities. The gross corruptions of some in Pergamum had no parallel there. Sardis is rebuked for none, because its evil was deeper and sadder. It was not flagrantly corrupt, it was only — dead. Of course it had no persecutions. Faithful Smyrna had tribulation unto death, hanging like a thunder-cloud overhead. But Sardis had not life enough to be obnoxious. Why should the world trouble itself about a dead Church ? It exactly answers the world's purpose, and is really only a bit of the world under another name.
U Preaching at St. George's in the East, London, June 22, 1879, he said : " However it may be with the East-End of London, I am not sure whether the West-End has any reason to plume itself on its superior godliness, whether the dukes and duchesses, the earls and countesses, the squires and kniglits and their ladies, are much more like what men and women ought to be than the
* J. Burns, Illustrations from Art, 316,
124 A DEAD AND ALIVE CHURCH
costermongers and women of the East of London. No doubt at the West-End churches are filled ; but, if we ask what fills the West-End churches, it is not certain that we can give a satisfactory answer to the question. I am not sure that they are always filled with people hungering and thirsting after righteousness, or with people who wish to know what the Christian temper and the Christian life are, in order that they may exhibit the one and live the other. It is all very well to attract people by a spectacular service and an eloquent harangue ; but I was told the other day of a noted preacher who drew an enormous crowd to hear him under the dome of St. Paul's, and yet, immediately the service was over, the people rushed out asking who had won the Grand Prix de Paris." I
4. When a Church is dead, or only half alive, the defect shows itself specifically and certainly in this manner : The Church's work is only half done, and can be but half fulfilled, when only a portion of its members fulfil their allotted task to their Master. If, in a Church which numbers five hundred, only fifty are doing the utmost they can do, the Church's measure of work will not be fulfilled before the judgment-seat of God. Fifty individuals cannot do what it takes five hundred to do. A half-done work, how it is spoiled ! The work of a Church that is wearily done, in its life and extent, by a few living men and women in it, is poorly done ; they do it with such a struggle ; they are so weary and worn out ; they have no pleasure, they have no enthusiasm, in doing it. How can they have ? One man cannot do another man's work. One link of a chain cannot do duty for another link, and if the one goes, sometimes the chain is worth nothing at all. The work of a dead or half -dead Church stands before God's judgment-seat unfulfilled. Work is indispensable to the enjoyment of a Church's good. No Church can heartily enjoy what we call religious privileges unless it is working hard ; and no individual member of that Church will get the good of it unless he is taking a part in the Church's work. He does not need to be an office-bearer or any- thing of that sort ; his work may be just friendliness to others in the house of God, showiug a kind spirit to them or taking an interest in them, showing neighbourliness by his Church character.
II Christ's Church exists in order to make possible, to make known, to make active, the work which Christ, by His Incarnation, ^ J. W. Diggle, Bishop Fraser^s Lancashire Li/e, 341.
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125
Death, and Resurrection, achieved once for all. It was done, it was finished, the task given Him to do. But only through man could it be laid open to man. Ho needs men to be His instru- ments, His organ, by which His own activity, supreme and unique, may find channels of entry — may be solicited, evoked, distributed. In securing men who know His true Name, He is securing a seat, a home, into which He can throw His own spiritual forces. They become, through so believing, the means by which His special and personal powers can liberate and discharge themselves. As He is the Light of the world, so they become, in Him, the eye through which the light illuminates the body : " Ye are the light of the world." As He is the sole purifying Sacrifice, so they become, organized into His Name, the seed of all purification — the salt through which the bulk of men are saved from corrupting : " Ye^ are the salt of the world." In becoming clean in Him, they become; the instruments of further cleansing : " If I have washed your feet( ye ought also to wash the feet of others." In confessing His Name, in becoming stones built into His Temple, they becomej necessarily the seat and sanctuary whence issue the motives,' powers, operations, activities of His authoritative Name.^