Here is Jesus’ ideal of character—­poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted for righteousness’ sake.  To be these is to be blessed.  And here is Jesus’ ideal of what, over and above the inherent blessedness of such a character, constitutes the true blessedness of a soul—­the possession of the kingdom of heaven, comfort from God, the inheritance of the earth of which the inheritor may not own a yard, full satisfaction of the longing after righteousness, the obtaining of mercy from God, the name of sons of God, and, last as first, the possession of the kingdom of heaven.  Is Jesus’ ideal yours?  Do you believe that such a character is the highest that a man can attain, that in itself it is truly blessed, and will bring about results in contrast with which all baser-born joys are coarse and false?  Happy will you be if you so believe, and if so believing you make the ideal which He paints your aim, and therefore secure the blessedness which He attaches to it as your exceeding great reward.

SALT WITHOUT SAVOUR

’Ye are the salt of the earth:  but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?  It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.’—­MATT. v. 13.

These words must have seemed ridiculously presumptuous when they were first spoken, and they have too often seemed mere mockery and irony in the ages since.  A Galilean peasant, with a few of his rude countrymen who had gathered round him, stands up there on the mountain, and says to them, ’You, a handful, are the people who are to keep the world from rotting, and to bring it to all its best light.’  Strange when we think that Christ believed that these men were able to do these grand functions because they drew their power from Himself!  Stranger still to think that, notwithstanding all the miserable inconsistencies of the professing Church ever since, yet, on the whole, the experience of history has verified these words!  And although some wise men may curl their lips with a sneer as they say about us Christians, ’Ye are the salt of the earth!’ yet the most progressive, and the most enlightened, and the most moral portion of humanity has derived its impulse to progress, its enlightenment as to the loftiest truths, and the purest portion of its 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.