亨利·凡·戴克/Henry Van Dyke
“You are the salt of the earth.”Matthew 5: 13.
This figure of speech is plain and pungent. Salt is savory, purifying, preservative. It is one of those superfluities which the great French wit defined as“things that are very necessary”. From the very beginning of human history men have set a high value upon salt and sought for it in caves and by the seashore. The nation that had a good supply was counted rich. A bag of salt, among the barbarous tribes, was worth more than a man. The Jews prized it especially, because they lived in a warm climate where food was difficult to keep, and because their religion laid particular emphasis on cleanliness, and because salt was largely used in their sacrifices.
Christ chose an image which was familiar, when He said to His disciples,“You are the salt of the earth.”This was his conception of their mission, their influence. They were to cleanse and sweeten the world in which they lived, to keep it from decay, to give a new and more wholesome flavor to human existence. Their function was not to be passive, but active. The sphere of its action was to be this present life. There is no use in saving salt for heaven. It will not be needed there, its mission is to permeate, season, and purify things on earth.
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Men of privilege without power are waste material. Men of enlightenment without influence are the poorest kind of rubbish. Men of intellectual and moral and religious culture, who are not active forces for good in society, are not worth what it costs to produce and keep them.
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You college students are men of privilege. It costs ten times as much, in labor and care and money, to bring you out where you are today, as it costs to educate the average man, and a hundred times as much as it costs to raise a boy without any education. This fact brings you to face with a question: are you going to be worth your salt?
“你們是人間的鹽。”——《馬太福音》第五章，第十三節