no THE SALT OF THE EARTH
3. When the salt has lost its savour it is good for nothing. There are some things, the chemist tells us, which, when they have lost their own peculiar form and utility, are still of some good, for they can he put 1" otbei and baser uses. But to what use can a dead Church be put ? Sou may try to galvanize it into newness of life hy artificial means, but, after all, it is nothing more than a corpse. All that can be truly said of such an attempt is that it was an interesting experiment. A mere pro- fession of religion is either an embarrassment or, what is worse, a fatal delusion. This old world of ours has undergone many material changes during its existence, yet it has grown more and more beautiful, in spite of them, as the forces of evolution have unfolded themselves. But there is one change it could hardly survive as the habitation of man, and that is the lost conscious- ness of the presence and power of God with the people, or the loss of the sweetness and beauty of the Eedeemer of men as revealed in the lives of those faithful souls who sincerely love Him. For the Church which has lost its savour there will come a day when men, overwhelmed by their disappoint- ment, and maddened by their sense of its lost savour, will tear it to pieces, just as the enraged mob in Paris is said to have torn the fillet from Reason's brow and trampled it under their feet.
If the salt should lose its savour, if the regenerative force should die out of the Church — if there were a Church into which the spirit of the world had passed, a Church which had become assimilated by the world, a Church which had somehow learnt to speak the world's language and to justify the world's morality, and to echo the world's phrases, a Church which ate and drank at the world's table without the world becoming aware of any protest, or any discomfort, or any fear, a Church which, instead of awakening consciences, sent them to sleep, instead of exposing the world's plagues Mattered them into excusing or forgetting them : in the name of God what use, or place, has such a Church on the face of the earth ? Such a Church has falsified the first law of its existence. It has killed out the very conscience which it was created to sustain. It has destroyed the very power of remedy from sin which it alone held in charge. It has poisoued the wells of human hope. "If the very salt have lost its «avour,
ST. MATTHEW v. 13 in
wherewith shall it be salted ? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men."
^| The really amazing thing is that such immense numbers of people have accepted Christianity in the world, and profess them- selves Christians without the slightest doubt of their sincerity, who never regard the Christian principles at all. The chief aim, it would seem, of the Church has been not to preserve the original revelation, but to accommodate it to human instincts and desires. It seems to me to resemble the very quaint and simple old Breton legend, which relates how the Saviour sent the Apostles out to sell stale fish as fresh ; and when they returned unsuccessful, He was angry with them, and said, " How shall I make you into fishers of men, if you cannot even persuade simple people to buy stale fish for fresh ? " That is a very trenchant little allegory of ecclesiastical methods ! And perhaps it is even so that it has come to pass that Christianity is in a sense a failure, or rather an unfulfilled hope, because it has made terms with the world, has become pompous and respectable and mundane and influential and combative, and has deliberately exalted civic duty above love.1
Tf Glanced over some lectures of Mr. Gore's on " The Mission of the Church." He tells a story of St. Thomas Aquinas which is new to me. The Pope said to him, as the bags full of the money of the faithful, who had crowded to the Jubilee, were carried past : " Peter could not say now, ' Silver and gold have I none.' " " No," was the reply, " neither could he say, ' Arise, and walk ! '" *
1 A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 197.
3 Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a fXary, 1892-1895, i. 138.
A Conservative Reformer.
ST MATT.
Literature.
Bellars (W.), Our Inheritance, 128.
Campbell (L.), Tlie Christian Ideal, 236.
Chadwick (W. E.), SocialRelationships, 91.
Dawson (G.), Three Books of God, 58.
Drummond (R. J.), Faith's Certainties, 41.
Holland (H. S.), Pleas and Claims, 292.
Jones (J. C), Studies in the Gospel according to Matthew, 111.
Lyttelton (E.), Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 125.
McAfee (C. B.), Studies in the Sermon on tlie Mount, 55.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew i.-viii., 199.
Matheson (G.), Rests by the River, 147.
„ „ Thoughts for Life's Journey, 51.
Matthew (J.), The Law of Jehovah, 205. Meyer (F. B.), The Directory of the Devout Life, 47. Morison (J.), A Practical Commentary on the Gospel according to