Matthew 5:13

A Pinch Of Salt

Ye are the salt of the earth. Matthew 5:13.

Have salt in yourselves. Mark 9:50.

If someone were to tell you that you might have either sugar or salt but not both, which would you choose? Perhaps most of you, without stopping to consider, would reply that you would rather have no salt than no sugar. But would you really?

No sugar would mean no sweets, no jam, and rather a tasteless pudding. Yes, but you could always have butter on your bread, and you might eat fruit with your pudding, and perhaps, if you didn't have sweets for a very long time, you could manage to get along without them.

But try to imagine how odd meat, or fish, or porridge, or potatoes would be without salt! An Irish boy was once asked what salt was, and he replied, “Salt is the thing that makes taters taste bad if you don't put it on them.” Don't you think that was a good answer? Salt is added to eatables to flavor them, and not only to flavor them, but to bring out the flavor. For a pinch of salt is added even to sweet things like puddings and pastry to make them taste nicer.

Not only is salt necessary to make our food palatable, it is also required to make it wholesome. In order to be healthy, animals and human beings alike require to eat a certain amount of salt every day. Can you guess how much salt each human being in Great Britain consumes in one year? Sixty-two pounds! Some may eat a little more, some a little less, but that is the average. We need salt to keep our blood in a healthy condition and to help us to digest our food. In fact, we could not live without it. A traveler who crossed South America relates how his horses and cattle died because he had not sufficient salt to give them. They died starved for want of salt even while they were nibbling the green grass.

There is yet another common use of salt. It is employed for preserving things. Meat or fish which is not wanted for use at once may be salted, and so kept good and wholesome. In the days of our grandfathers people had not sufficient feeding stuffs for their cattle during the winter, so they killed a great many animals in the autumn and salted the flesh, and they lived on salted meat all winter. Old people can tell you of the great salting time at the beginning of winter in preparation for the months when they had no other food.

When Jesus was on earth He lived in a small unimportant corner of the world. All around was a great empire of heathen people very powerful, and very wicked. He gathered round Him a few poor common people fishermen, and tradesmen, and farmers who believed in His words, and tried to do what He told them. To them He said one day that they were “the salt of the earth.” What did He mean?

Before Jesus came, the rule of the world was let every man live for himself, and let the weak go to the wall. But Jesus brought into the world the spirit of love and self-sacrifice, the spirit which respects the rights of others, which has pity on the poor and helpless, which takes care of little children. That was the marvelous thing that Jesus did. He lived and died in that spirit, and He taught it to His disciples. That was what was going to make them “the salt of the earth.” Like salt, they were to make the world a sweeter place to live in. Like salt, they were to make it more wholesome. Like salt, they were to preserve it from ruin and decay.

It is because the disciples were faithful to the spirit and the teaching of Jesus that the world is a better place for you and me today.

And, boys and girls, we too can be “the salt of the earth” if we “have salt” in ourselves, and that just means, if we ask Jesus to fill us with His spirit of love and self-sacrifice. For the world still needs this salt, and we can be the bearers of it.

Once a little girl went into a chemist's shop and asked “glory divine.” The chemist was puzzled, and inquired what her mother wanted it for. “To throw round the room and in the back yard,” said the little one. Then the chemist understood. He said, “Oh, I expect it's chloride of lime (a kind of disinfectant) you want.” And the child nodded her head.

But, boys and girls, that little girl was nearer the truth than she knew. What is needed, not only “round the room and in the back yard,” but all over the world, is “glory divine”; and that is just another name for the glorious loving self-sacrificing spirit of Jesus.

Will you ask Jesus to fill you with this spirit? Will you help to spread it abroad?