The Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Exposition. Gore Charles

what they say? What is so useless as a hollow profession of religion? “It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.” “I would thou wert cold or hot. So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth.”34 Christians exist in order to make the contrast of their own lives apparent to the world.

      “Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

      We may point the significance of this teaching of our Lord by contrasting it with that of another great religious teacher. We have often heard it said that more people are good Mohammedans in Mohammedan countries than good Christians in Christian countries. That may be true, and for this reason: Mohammed set before his disciples an ideal of conduct calculated to commend itself naturally to the people he had to do with. Supposing no fundamental change of character, no real transformation, was required of them, he saw that they would be ready enough to observe religious ceremonies, and to fight, and to abstain from drink. He fastened on these things. These, he said, are what God requires of you. And he has won a high measure of success on the average. Mohammedans have been conspicuous for courage and temperance and regularity in the transaction of religious forms. But just because Mohammed was so easily satisfied, his religion has been a religion of stagnation. He neither aimed at nor effected any regeneration of man.

      But our Lord said “Except a man be born again,”—i.e. unless so fundamental a change take place in him, that it can only be compared to a fresh birth—“he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And He made it plain that the working out of this new birth would not be possible without the sternest self-denial. For this very reason our Lord’s religion has found fewer genuine adherents than Mohammedanism, but by means of those who have been genuine adherents it has effected a profound spiritual renewal even in society as a whole.

      No doubt the Church has often seemed to forget her Lord’s method. There have been times—as at the baptism of the Franks—when the Church incorporated men in masses, allowing the Christian standard to be lowered almost indefinitely, in order that a whole race might be called Christian. So, again, there was a time when Jesuit casuists said (in effect), if only we can keep people Catholic, making their confessions and receiving absolution, it shall be done at any cost of accommodation to existing morals. Once more, the Church of England, in order to maintain the ideal of “a national Church,” has in result allowed almost all the power of spiritual discipline, which she should have kept in her own hand, to be surrendered to a Parliament which is in the loosest possible relation to Christianity of any kind.

      In each of these cases the Church abandoned the method of Christ: she sacrificed reality to numbers, or genuine discipleship to supposed political influence, and as a result in each case the salt lost its savour.

      The question remains for us “Wherewith can it be salted?” Is the savour of true Christianity among us so far gone as to be irrecoverable? We thankfully answer No. But if we are to make good our denial, we must set to work to let men understand that, as the Church has a creed which she cannot let go, and a ministry and sacraments which are committed to her to exercise and to dispense, so she has a moral standard, which, if she is not to fall under the curse of barrenness, she must re-erect and be true to. Only when men have come to understand what the Christian moral standard is—in marriage and in the home, in commerce and in politics—and to understand that it can no more be dispensed with than the creed or the sacraments, is there any prospect of a healthy revival of church life.