There is no need for asking the question whether such loss is a physical
fact or not, whether in the natural realm it is possible for any forms
of matter that have saline taste to lose it by any cause. That does not
at all concern us. The point is that it is possible for us, who call
ourselves--and are--Christians, to lose our penetrating pungency, which
stays corruption; to lose all that distinguishes us from the men that we
are to better.
Now I think that nobody can look upon the present condition of
professing Christendom; or, in a narrower aspect, upon the present
condition of English Christianity; or in a still narrower, nobody can
look round upon this congregation; or in the narrowest view, none of us
can look into our own hearts--without feeling that this saying comes
perilously near being true of us. And I beg you, dear Christian friends,
while I try to dwell on this point, to ask yourselves this
question--Lord, is it I? and not to be thinking of other people whom you
may suppose the cap will fit.
There is, then, manifest on every side--first of all, the obliteration
of the distinction between the salt and the mass into which it is
inserted, or to put it into other words, Christian men and women swallow
down bodily, and practise thoroughly, the maxims of the world, as to
life, as to what is pleasant and what is desirable, and as to the
application of morality to business. There is not a hair of difference
in that respect between hundreds and thousands of professing Christian
men, and the irreligious man that has his office up the same staircase.
I know, of course, that there are in every communion saintly men and
women who are labouring to keep themselves unspotted from the world, but
I know too that in every communion there are those, whose religion has
next to no influence on their general conduct, and does not even keep
them from corruption, to say nothing of making them sources of purifying
influence. You cannot lay the flattering unction to your souls that the
reason why there is so little difference between the Church and the
world to-day is because the world has grown so much better. I know that
to a large extent the principles of Christian ethics have permeated the
consciousness of a country like this, and have found their way even
amongst people who make no profession at all of being Christians. Thank
God for it; but that does not explain it all.
If you take a red-hot ball out of a furnace and lay it down upon a
frosty moor, two processes will go on--the ball will lose heat and the
surrounding atmosphere will gain it. There are two ways by which you
equalise the temperature of a hotter and a colder body: the one is by
the hot one getting cold, and the other is by the cold one getting hot.
If you are not heating the world, the world is freezing you. Every man
influences all men round him, and receives influences from them, and if
there be not more exports than imports, if there be not more influences
and mightier influences raying out from him than are coming into him, he
is a poor creature, and at the mercy of circumstances. 'Men must either
be hammers or anvil';--must either give blows or receive them. I am
afraid that a great many of us who call ourselves Christians get a great
deal more harm from the world than we ever dream of doing good to it.
Remember this, 'you are the salt of the earth,' and if you do not salt
the world, the world will rot you.
Is there any difference between your ideal of happiness and the
irreligious one? Is there any difference between your notion of what is
pleasure, and the irreligious one? Is there any difference in your
application of the rules of morality to daily life, any difference in
your general way of looking at things from the way of the ungodly world?
Yes, or No? Is the salt being infected by the carcass, or is it
purifying the corruption? Answer the question, brother, as before God
and your own conscience.
Then there is another thing. There can be no doubt but that all round
and shared by us, there are instances of the cooling of the fervour of
Christian devotion. That is the reason for the small distinction in
character and conduct between the world and the Church to-day. An Arctic
climate will not grow tropical fruits, and if the heat have been let
down, as it has been let down, you cannot expect the glories of
character and the pure unworldliness of conduct that you would have had
at a higher temperature. Nor is there any doubt but that the present
temperature is, with some of us, a distinct _loss_ of heat. It was
not always so low. The thermometer has gone down.
There are, no doubt, some among us who had once a far more vigorous
Christian life than they have to-day; who were once far more aflame with
the love of God than they are now. And although I know, of course, that
as years go on emotion will become less vivid, and feeling may give
place to principle, yet I know no reason why, as years go on, fervour
should become less, or the warmth of our love to our Master should
decline. There will be less spluttering and crackling when the fire
burns up; there may be fewer flames; but there will be a hotter glow of
ruddy, unflaming heat. That is what ought to be in our Christian
experience.
Nor can there be any doubt, I think, but that the partial obliteration
of the distinction between the Church and the world, and the decay of
the fervour of devotion which leads to it, are both to be traced to a
yet deeper cause, and that is the loss or diminution of actual
fellowship with Jesus Christ. It was that which made these early
disciples 'salt.' It was that which made them 'light.' It is that, and
that alone, which makes devotion burn fervid, and which makes characters
glow with the strange saintliness that rebukes iniquity, and works for
the purifying of the world. And so I would remind you that fellowship
with Jesus Christ is no vague exercise of the mind but is to be
cultivated by three things, which I fear me are becoming less and less
habitual amongst professing Christians:--Meditation, the study of the
Bible, private prayer. If you have not these--and you know best whether
you have them or not--no power in heaven or earth can prevent you from
losing the savour that makes you salt.
III. Now I come to the next point, and that is the solemn question: Is
there a possibility of re-salting the saltless salt, of restoring the
lost savour?
'Wherewithal shall it be salted?' says the Master. That is plain enough,
but do not let us push it too far. If the Church is meant for the
purifying of the world, and the Church itself needs purifying, is there
any power in the world that will do it? If the army joins the rebels, is
there any force that will bring back the army to submission? Our Lord is
speaking about ordinary means and agencies. He is saying in effect, if
the one thing that is intended to preserve the meat loses its power, is
there anything lying about that will salt that? So far, then, the answer
seems to be--No.
But Christ has no intention that these words should be pushed to the
extreme of asserting that if salt loses its savour, if a man loses the
pungency of his Christian life, he cannot win it back, by going again to
the source from which he received it at first. There is no such
implication in these words. There is no obstacle in the way of a
penitent returning to the fountain of all power and purity, nor of the
full restoration of the lost savour, if a man will only bring about a
full reunion of himself with the source of the savour.
Dear brethren, the message is to each of us; the same pleading words,
which the Apocalyptic seer heard from Heaven, come to you and me:
'Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do
the first works.' And all the savour and the sweetness that flow from
fellowship with Jesus Christ will come back to us in larger measure than
ever, if we will come back to the Lord. Repentance and returning will
bring back the saltness to the salt, and the brilliancy to the light.
IV. But one last word warns us what is the certain end of the saltless
salt.
As the other Evangelist puts it: 'It is neither good for the land nor
for the dunghill.' You cannot put it upon the soil; there is no
fertilising virtue in it. You cannot even fling it into the
rubbish-heap; it will do mischief there. Pitch it out into the road; it
will stop a cranny somewhere between the stones when once it is well
trodden down by men's heels. That is all it is fit for. God has no use
for it, man has no use for it. If it has failed in doing the only thing
it was created for, it has failed altogether. Like a knife that will not
cut, or a lamp that will not burn, which may have a beautiful handle, or
a beautiful stem, and may be highly artistic and decorated; but the
question is, Does it cut, does it burn? If not, it is a failure
altogether, and in this world there is no room for failures. The poorest
living thing of the lowest type will jostle the dead thing out of the
way. And so, for the salt that has lost its savour, there is only one
thing to be done with it--cast it out, and tread it under foot.
Yes; where are the Churches of Asia Minor, the patriarchates of
Alexandria, of Antioch, of Constantinople; the whole of that early
Syrian, Palestinian Christianity: where are they? Where is the Church of
North Africa, the Church of Augustine? 'Trodden under foot of men!' Over
the archway of a mosque in Damascus you can read the half-obliterated
inscription--'Thy Kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting Kingdom,' and
above it--'There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet!' The
salt has lost his savour, and been cast out.
And does any one believe that the Churches of Christendom are eternal in
their present shape? I see everywhere the signs of disintegration in the
existing embodiments and organisations that set forth Christian life.
And I am sure of this, that in the days that are coming to us, the storm
in which we are already caught, all dead branches will be whirled out of
the tree. So much the better for the tree! And a great deal that calls
itself organised Christianity will have to go down because there is not
vitality enough in it to stand. For you know it is low vitality that
catches all the diseases that are going; and it is out of the sick
sheep's eyeholes that the ravens peck the eyes. And it will be the
feeble types of spiritual life, the inconsistent Christianities of our
churches, that will yield the crop of apostates and heretics and
renegades, and that will fall before temptation.
Brethren, remember this: Unless you go back close to your Lord, you will
go further away from Him. The deadness will deepen, the coldness will
become icier and icier; you will lose more and more of the life, and
show less and less of the likeness, and purity, of Jesus Christ until
you come to this--I pray God that none of us come to it--'Thou hast a
name that thou livest, and art dead.' Dead!
My brother, let us return unto the Lord our God, and keep nearer Him
than we ever have done, and bring our hearts more under the influence of
His grace, and cultivate the habit of communion with Him; and pray and
trust, and leave ourselves in His hands, that His power may come into
us, and that we in the beauty of our characters, and the purity of our
lives, and the elevation of our spirits, may witness to all men that we
have been with Christ; and may, in some measure, check the corruption
that is in the world through lust.