Then, besides these thoughts of necessary union and association upon common ground, there is the other consideration that absolute separation would defeat the very purpose for which Christian people are here.  ’Ye are the salt of the earth,’ said Christ.  Yes, and if you keep the meat on one plate and the salt on another, what good will the salt be?  It has to be rubbed in particle by particle, and brought into contact over all the surface, and down into the depths of the meat that it is to preserve from putrefaction.  And no Christian churches or individuals do their duty, and fulfil their function on earth, unless they are thus closely associated and intermingled with the world that they should be trying to leaven and save.  A cloistered solitude, or a proud standing apart from the ordinary movements of the community, or a neglect, on the plea of our higher duties, of the duties of the citizen of a free country—­these are not the ways to fulfil the exhortation of my text.  ’Let the dead bury their dead,’ said Christ; but He did not mean that His Church was to stand apart from the world, and let it go its own way.  It is a bad thing for both when little Christian coteries gather themselves together, and talk about their own goodness and religion, and leave the world to perish.  Clotted blood is death; circulated, it is life.

But, whilst all this is perfectly true—­and there are associations that we must not break if we are to do our work as Christian people—­it is also true that it is possible, in the closest unions with men who do not share our faith, to do the same thing that they are doing, with a difference which separates us from them, even whilst we are united with them.  They tell us that, however dense any material substance may seem to be, there is always a film of air between contiguous particles.  And there should be a film between us and our Christless friends and companions and partners, not perceptible perhaps to a superficial observer, but most real.  If we do our common work as a religious duty, and in the exercise of all our daily occupations ’set the Lord always before’ us, however closely we may be associated with people who do not so live, they will know the difference; never fear!  And you will know the difference, and will not be identified with them, but separate in a wholesome fashion from them.

And, dear brethren, if I may go a step further, I would venture to say that it seems to me that our Christian communities want few things more in this day than the reiteration of the old saying, ’Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.’  There is so much in this time to break down the separation between him that believeth in Christ and him that doth not; narrowness has come to be thought such an enormous wickedness, and liberality is so lauded by all sorts of superficial people, that Christian men need to be summoned back to their standard.  ’Being let go, they went