So the Jews said to him who was cured, "It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to carry the mat."

 (a) To be spiritually dead is to have stopped trying. It is to have come to look on all faults as ineradicable and all virtues as unattainable. But the Christian life cannot stand still; it must either go on or slip back; and to stop trying is therefore to slip back to death. 