Dear brethren, the message is to each of us; the same pleading words, which the Apocalyptic seer heard from Heaven, come to you and me:  ’Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.’  And all the savour and the sweetness that flow from fellowship with Jesus Christ will come back to us in larger measure than ever, if we will come back to the Lord.  Repentance and returning will bring back the saltness to the salt, and the brilliancy to the light.

IV.  But one last word warns us what is the certain end of the saltless salt.

As the other Evangelist puts it:  ’It is neither good for the land nor for the dunghill.’  You cannot put it upon the soil; there is no fertilising virtue in it.  You cannot even fling it into the rubbish-heap; it will do mischief there.  Pitch it out into the road; it will stop a cranny somewhere between the stones when once it is well trodden down by men’s heels.  That is all it is fit for.  God has no use for it, man has no use for it.  If it has failed in doing the only thing it was created for, it has failed altogether.  Like a knife that will not cut, or a lamp that will not burn, which may have a beautiful handle, or a beautiful stem, and may be highly artistic and decorated; but the question is, Does it cut, does it burn?  If not, it is a failure altogether, and in this world there is no room for failures.  The poorest living thing of the lowest type will jostle the dead thing out of the way.  And so, for the salt that has lost its savour, there is only one thing to be done with it—­cast it out, and tread it under foot.

Yes; where are the Churches of Asia Minor, the patriarchates of Alexandria, of Antioch, of Constantinople; the whole of that early Syrian, Palestinian Christianity:  where are they?  Where is the Church of North Africa, the Church of Augustine?  ‘Trodden under foot of men!’ Over the archway of a mosque in Damascus you can read the half-obliterated inscription—­’Thy Kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting Kingdom,’ and above it—­’There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet!’ The salt has lost his savour, and been cast out.

And does any one believe that the Churches of Christendom are eternal in their present shape?  I see everywhere the signs of disintegration in the existing embodiments and organisations that set forth Christian life.  And I am sure of this, that in the days that are coming to us, the storm in which we are already caught, all dead branches will be whirled out of the tree.  So much the better for the tree!  And a great deal that calls itself organised Christianity will have to go down because there is not vitality enough in it to stand.  For you know it is low vitality that catches all the diseases that are going; and it is out of the sick sheep’s eyeholes that the ravens peck the eyes.  And it will be the feeble types of spiritual life, the inconsistent Christianities of our churches, that will yield the crop of apostates and heretics and renegades, and that will fall before temptation.