Christians need
despair, none that Christ's Gospel cannot redeem. Whatever my text
means, it does not mean cowardly and unbelieving doubt as to the power
of the Gospel on the most degraded and sinful.

II. So, the text enjoins on the Christian Church separation from an
idolatrous world.

'Ephraim is joined to idols.' Do you 'let him alone.' Now, there has
been much harm done by misreading the force of the injunction of
separation from the world. There is a great deal of union and
association with the most godless people in our circle, which is
inevitable. Family bonds, business connections, civic obligations--all
these require that the Church shall not withdraw from the world. There
is the wide common ground of Politics and Art and Literature, and a
hundred other interests, on which it does Christian men no good, and the
world much harm, if the former withdraw to themselves, and on the plea
of superior sanctity, leave these great departments of interest and
influence to be occupied only by non-Christians.

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