If the first object of our life here is that we should please and honour God, the second is certainly that in so doing we should leave this world a better and a sweeter place than we found it.

Christianity in the beginning worked its way into every section of society by the personal influence of Christian men and women, and it spreads in exactly the same way today.  The world in which the early disciples found themselves was rotten; they helped purify it.  And unless good influences are powerfully at work, society will always get rotten because corrupting forces are active all the time, as we are only too aware at the present day.  But there’s nothing new about it.

That is what Our Lord meant when he said that his disciples were the salt of the earth – they were to act as a preservative and prevent society from going bad.  Jesus always saw some good in everyone – except in disciples whose discipleship was ineffective.  They, like stale and insipid salt, were good for nothing.