TJ A king asked his three daughters how much they loved him. Two of them replied that they loved him better than all the gold and silver in the world. The youngest one said she loved him better than salt. The king was not pleased with her answer, as he thought salt was not very palatable. But the cook, overhearing the remark, put no salt in anything for breakfast next morning, and the meal was so insipid that the king could not enjoy it. He then saw the force of his daughter's remark. She loved him so well that nothing was good without him.1
(4) Salt does its work silently, inconspicuously, gradually. " Ye are the light of the world," says Christ in the next verse. Light is far-reaching and brilliant, flashing that it may be seen. That is one side of Christian work, the side that most of us like best, the conspicuous kind of it. But there is a very much humbler, and a very much more useful, kind of work that we have all to do. We shall never be the " light of the world," except on condition of being " the salt of the earth." We have to play the humble, inconspicuous, silent part of cheeking corruption by a pure example before we can aspire to play the other part of
1 A. C. Dixon, Through Night to Morning, 197.
io6 THE SALT OF THE EARTH
raying out light into the darkness, and so drawing men to Christ Himself.
*| I was once travelling in an Oriental country, where life was squalid, women despised, and houses built of mud ; and of a sudden, I came upon a village where all seemed changed. The houses had gardens before them and curtains in their windows ; the children did not beg of the passer-by, but called out a friendly greeting. What had happened? I was fifty miles from a Chris- tian mission-station, and this mission had been there for precisely fifty years. Slowly and patiently the influence had radiated at the rate of a mile a year, so that one could now for a space of fifty miles across that barren land perceive the salt of the Chris- tian spirit, and could see the light of the Christian life shining as from a lighthouse fifty miles away. That was the work to which Jesus summoned the world, — not an ostentatious or revolutionary or dramatic work, but the work of the salt and of the light. The saying of Jesus is not for the self-satisfied or conspicuous, but for the discouraged and obscure. A man says to himself : " I cannot be a leader, a hero, or a scholar, but I can at least do the work of the salt and keep the life that is near to me from spoiling ; I can at least do the work of the light so that the way of life shall not be wholly dark." Then, as he gives himself to this self-effacing service, he hears the great word : " He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it," and answers gladly : ",So then death worketh in us, but life in you." 1
II.
The Salt without the Savour.
" If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? "
1. Salt may lose its seasoning power. In Christ's era salt frequently reached the consumer in a very imperfect state, being largely mixed with earth. The salt which has lost its savour is simply the earthy residuum of such impure salt after the sodium chloride has been washed out. Blocks of salt were quarried on the shores of the Dead Sea and brought to Jerusalem, and a store of this rock-salt was kept by the Levites in the Temple to be used in the sacrifices. It was very impure — usually containing a large mixture of sand — and in moist weather the saline ingredient deliquesced and, trickling away, left the porous lump in its original 1 F. G. Peaboily, Mornings in the College C/tapel, ii. 53.
ST. MATTHEW v. 13 107
shape, but all its substance, all its " savour " gone. For food it was no longer fit seasoning. Cast on the altar it would no longer decrepitate and sparkle, and in flowers of flaming violet adorn and consume the offering. Even the farmer did not care to get it. The gritty, gravelly mass was good for nothing — only fit to be pounded and sprinkled on the slippery pavement, and trodden under the feet of men.
II I have often seen just such salt, and the identical disposition of it that our Lord has mentioned. A merchant of Sidon having farmed of the Government the revenue from the importation of salt, brought over an immense quantity from the marshes of Cyprus — enough, in fact, to supply the whole province for at least twenty years. This he had transferred to the mountains, to cheat the Government out of some small percentage. Sixty-five houses in June — Lady Stanhope's village — were rented and filled with salt. These houses have merely earthen floors, and the salt next the ground in a few years entirely spoiled. I saw large quantities of it literally thrown into the street, to be trodden under foot of men and beasts. It was " good for nothing." Similar magazines are common in Palestine, and have been from remote ages ; and the sweeping out of the spoiled salt and casting it into the street are actions familiar to all men. Maundrell, who visited the lake at Jebbftl, tells us that he found salt there which had entirely "lost its savour," and the same abounds among the debris at Usdum, and in other localities of rock-salt at the south end of the Dead Sea. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that the salt of this country, when in contact with the ground, or exposed to rain and sun, does become insipid, and useless. From the manner in which it is gathered, much earth and other impurities are necessarily collected with it. Not a little of it is so impure that it cannot be used at all ; and such salt soon effloresces and turns to dust — not to fruitful soil, however. It is not only good for nothing itself, but it actually destroys all fertility wherever it is thrown ; and this is the reason why it is cast into the street. There is a sort of verbal verisimilitude in the manner in which our Lord alludes to the act — " it is cast out " and " trodden under foot " ; so troublesome is this corrupted salt, that it is carefully swept up, carried forth, and thrown into the street. There is no place about the house, yard, or garden where it can be tolerated. No man will allow it to be thrown on to his field, and the only place for it is the street ; and there it is cast, to be trodden under foot of men.1