s morality, from the men who received their power to impart
these from Jesus Christ.

And so, dear brethren, I have to say two or three things now, which I
hope will be plain and earnest and searching, about the function of the
Christian Church, and of each individual member of it, as set forth in
these words; about the solemn possibility that the qualification for
that function may go away from a man; about the grave question as to
whether such a loss can ever be repaired; and about the certain end of
the saltless salt.

I. First, then, as to the high task of Christ's disciples as here set
forth.

'Ye are the salt of the earth'! The metaphor wants very little
explanation, however much enforcement it may require. It involves two
things: a grave judgment as to the actual state of society, and a lofty
claim as to what Christ's followers are able to do to it.

A grave judgment as to the actual state of society--it is corrupt and
tending to corruption. You do not salt a living thing. You salt a dead
one that it may not be a rotting one. And, Christ says by implication
here, what He says plainly more than once in other places:--'Human
society, without My influence, is a carcass that is rotting away and
disintegrating; and you, faithful handful, who have partially
apprehended the meaning of My mission, and have caught something of the
spirit of My life, you are to be rubbed into that rotting mass to
sweeten it, to arrest decomposition, to stay corruption, to give flavour
to its insipidity, and to save it from falling to pieces of its own
wickedness. Ye are the _salt_ of the earth.'

Now, it is not merely because we are the bearers of a truth that will do
all this that we are thus spoken of, but we Christian men are to do it
by the influence of conduct and character.

There are two or three thoughts suggested by this metaphor. The chief
one is that of our power, and therefore our obligation, to arrest the
corruption round us, by our own purity. The presence of a good man
hinders the devil from having elbow-room to do his work. Do you and I
exercise a repressive influence (if we do not do anything better), so
that evil and low-toned life is ashamed to show itself in our presence,
and skulks back as do wrong-doers from the bull's-eye of a policeman's
lantern? It is not a high function, but it is a very necessary one, and
it is one that all Christian men and women ought to discharge--that of
rebuking and hindering the oper