Ah, brethren! that notion of a progressive salvation at work in all true Christians has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as it has all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you that call yourselves Christ’s followers, and are not a bit further on than you were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions (perhaps less so, for relapses are dangerous) than you were then—­have not advanced any further into the depths of God than when you first got a glimpse of Him as loving, and your Father, in Jesus Christ—­are contented to linger, like some weak band of invaders in a strange land, on the borders and coasts, instead of pressing inwards and making it all your own.  Growing Christians—­may I venture to say?—­are not the majority of professing Christians.  And, on the other side, as certainly, there are progressive deterioration and approximation to disintegration and ruin.  How many men there are listening to me now who were far nearer being delivered from their sins when they were lads than they have ever been since!  How many in whom the sensibility to the message of salvation has disappeared, in whom the world has ossified their consciences and their hearts, in whom there is a more entire and unstruggling submission to low things and selfish things and worldly things and wicked things, than there used to be!  I am sure that there are not a few among us now who were far better, and far happier, when they were poor and young, and could still thrill with generous emotion and tremble at the Word of God, than they are to-day.  Why! there are some of you that could no more bring back your former loftier impulses, and compunction of spirit and throbs of desire towards Christ and His salvation, than you could bring back the birds’ nests or the snows of your youthful years.  You are perishing, in the very process of going down and down into the dark.

Now, notice, that the Apostle treats these two classes as covering the whole ground of the hearers of the Word, and as alternatives.  If not in the one class we are in the other.  Ah, brethren! life is no level plane, but a steep incline, on which there is no standing still, and if you try to stand still, down you go.  Either up or down must be the motion.  If you are not more of a Christian than you were a year ago, you are less.  If you are not more saved—­for there is a degree of comparison—­if you are not more saved, you are less saved.

Now, do not let that go over your head as pulpit thunder, meaning nothing.  It means you, and, whether you feel or think it or not, one or other of these two solemn developments is at this moment going on in you.  And that is not a thought to be put lightly on one side.