October 14

Christians make life tasty

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” (Matt. 5:13).
“Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt?” (Job 6:6).

Christ says to certain people, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” Mark, it is not, “Your sound doctrine, your splendid churches, your excellent ritual, your prayers, your charity, your preaching, is the salt of the earth, the light of the world.” These things are in no way to be disparaged. They are, or may be, most acceptable to God, but they are not “the salt of the earth.” The salt of the earth, the light of the world, are YE. Whom then does YE embrace? The answer is, those whose character has just been described in the preceding verses, the citizens of the kingdom of Heaven.

Of what use is salt? First of all, it makes many things agreeable to the taste, which without it are tasteless, insipid. Because earnest Christians do not delight themselves in many worldly amusements, those who give themselves to these things often suppose the life of a Christian to be dull, uninteresting, and insipid. How completely is this the opposite of the truth! To the Christian the commonest duty is interesting. He has discovered the secret of the great happiness that infallibly follows doing good to others. His ordinary conversation is far more interesting than that of others. . . .
To live so as to please God, to make known Christ and His salvation, to make human hearts glad around us, to make homes more sweet and bright, and by the Christian life on earth to prepare for the better life to come—
“’Tis worth living for this,
To administer bliss
And salvation through Jesus’ Name.”

—Benjamin Hellier.

Salt of the earth. It is the noiseless power of a good life, making all about us pure and blessed, not by great fuss and ado, not even by preaching, still less by scolding, but just by being Christ-like. Yet by no means a weak amiability that is scarcely felt: salt—a very quick and sharp unpleasantness to those whose moral life is chapped and cracked, dreadfully in the way of those who want to be wrong.
Salt of the earth. He who thinks that religion has nothing to do with politics, with business, with pleasure, is ignorant of the whole meaning of religion. It is a power right in the midst of all these, sweetening and purifying them all. Think of this as holiness—not rapture, not glowing and glorious experiences, but in Christ’s strength and for Christ’s sake, setting ourselves to sweeten and purify the life about us.
—Mark Guy Pearse.

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