The same ideas substantially are conveyed in my text as are expressed,
in different imagery, by the solemn words that precede it. The
'salting with fire' comes substantially to the same thing as the
amputation of the hand and foot, and the plucking out of the eye, that
cause to stumble. The metaphor expresses a painful process. It is no
pleasant thing to submit the bleeding stump to the actual cautery, and
to press it, all sensitive, upon the hot plate that will stop the flow
of blood. But such pain of shrinking nerves is to be borne, and to be
courted, if we are wise, rather than to carry the hand or the eye that
led astray unmutilated into total destruction. Surely that is common
sense.
The process is painful because we are weak. The highest ideal of
Christian progress would be realised if one of the metaphors with
which our Lord expresses it were adequate to cover the whole ground,
and we grew as the wheat grows, 'first the blade, then the ear, after
that the full corn in the ear.' But the tranquillity of vegetable
growth, and the peaceful progress which it symbolises, are not all
that you and I have to expect. Emblems of a very different kind have
to be associated with that of the quiet serenity of the growing corn,
in order to describe all that a Christian man has to experience in the
work of becoming like his Master. It is a fight as well as a growth;
it is a building requiring our continuity of effort, as well as a
growth. There is something to be got rid of as well as much to be
appropriated. We do not only need to become better, we need to become
less bad. Squatters have camped on the land, and cling to it and hold
it _vi et armis_; and these have to be ejected before peaceful
settlement is possible.
One might go on multiplying metaphors _ad libitum_, in order to bring
out the one thought that it needs huge courage to bear being
sanctified, or, if you do not like the theological word, to bear being
made better. It is no holiday task, and unless we are willing to have
a great deal that is against the grain done to us, and in us, and by
us, we shall never achieve it. We have to accept the pain. Desires
have to be thwarted, and that is not pleasant. Self has to be
suppressed, and that is not delightsome. A growing conviction of the
depth of one's own evil has to be cherished, and that is not a
grateful thought for any of us. Pains external, which are felt by
reason of disciplinary sorrows, are not worthy to be named in the same
day as those more recondite and inward agonies. But, brother, they are
all 'light' as compared with the exceeding weight of 'glory,' coming
from conformity to the example of our Master, which they prepare for
us.
And so I bring you Christ's message: He will have no man to enlist in
His army under false pretences. He will not deceive any of us by
telling us that it is all easy work and plain sailing. Salting by fire
can never be other than to the worse self an agony, just because it is
to the better self a rapture. And so let us make up our minds that no
man is taken to heaven in his sleep, and that the road is a rough one,
judging from the point of view of flesh and sense; but though rough,
narrow, often studded with sharp edges, like the plough coulters that
they used to lay in the path in the old rude ordeals, it still leads
straight to the goal, and bleeding feet are little to pay for a seat
at Christ's right hand.