My dear hearer, have you entered into that ark? Is your name enrolled among the list of passengers? And why not? Make known the reason of your backwardness. In other words, without figure, lay before you the question: Why are you not a church-member? Why do you stand aloof from the church? Why do you not join? I shall listen to a few of your reasons, and then tell you why you ought to join. Perhaps you are laboring under the fear that there is not room enough for you in the ark, that you are not invited among them to whom the gracious offer is tendered. Banish that thought instantly from your mind. "Not room enough in the ark!" "Not wanted!" "Come thou and thy house into the ark." You know the beautiful parable of the Great Supper, to which all and sundry were invited, and after everything had been precisely done as the master had commanded, the servant comes and tells the master of the house: "Yet there is room." A striking truth! Those words reveal that the Christian Ark is not yet fully tenanted, that, as the invitation is still out, you are yet in time. "Not _room_--not _wanted_!" God forbid that such a thought should in your breasts be found. "Come unto me," declared your Savior, "come thou into the ark." But you say: "I do belong to the church, the so-called 'Big Church,' _i. e._, to the number of those who still profess to be Christians, who uphold Christian principles and live good moral lives, who aim at what is right, and I am just as good and honest as any in the church." Perhaps so, my dear friend, perhaps more so, for not all that profess to be church-members are such; some are slimy and wily hypocrites. But _you_, as an honorable and professing Christian, ought to be a church-member, for you know that Christ does not acknowledge the "Big Church" of which you are speaking. You cannot put asunder what Christ has joined together. He has joined these two things together, Himself and the Church; outside of His ark He promises no salvation, and you have no right to expect it. For what is the Church? It is Christ's provision for the salvation of man,--how? By the preaching of His holy Word and the administration of His sacraments, as we heard. Is the Word of God preached in the "Big Church"? Is Baptism administered, the Lord's Communion received? How can faith in the Savior then be wrought, maintained, forgiveness of sins secured, hope and salvation? "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God," says the Bible. "If ye continue in my Word, then are ye my disciples, indeed," says the Savior. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you."