sound may suggest light and color, a perfume recall forgotten worlds; as a view, disclosed by a turn in the road, may carry us across years and oceans to scenes and friends long unvisited; as a bee, weaving his winding path from flower to flower, may bring back the laughter of children, the songs of birds, and the 5 visionary clouds fallen asleep in the voluptuous sky of June; so the universe will come to utter for us the voice of the Creator, who is our Father. Nothing touches the soul but leaves its impress, and thus, little by little, we are fashioned into the image of all we have seen and heard, known and medi- 10 tated; and if we learn to live with all that is fairest and purest and best, the love of it all will in the end become our very life.

SALT

HENRY VAN DYKE

BACCALAUREATE SERMON, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JUNE, 1898

INTRODUCTION

Henry van Dyke, preacher, author, and educator, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1852. He graduated from Princeton University in 1873, from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1877, and from Berlin University in 1878. From 1878 to 1882 he was pastor of the United Congregational Church of Newport, Rhode Island, and then of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York, till 1900, when he accepted a professorship of English literature at Princeton.

His works include: The Reality of Religion (1884); The Story of the Psalms (1887); The Poetry of Tennyson (1889, 1895); The Christ Child in Art (1894); Little Rivers (1895); The Gospel for an Age of Doubt (1896); The Other Wise Man (1896); The Builders and Other Poems (1897); The Gospel for a World of Sin (1899); The Toiling of Felix, and other Poems (1900); The Ruling Passion (1901); and The Blue Flower (1902).

Dr. van Dyke combines the highest degree of intellect with the highest felicity of literary expression. No modern writer has been so frequently quoted for his short, pithy proverbs. He is also one of the most successful preachers of to-day. In his pulpit discourses there is marked breadth, but also marked decision and definiteness; the vagueness that often characterizes sermons is wholly absent from his preaching.

As a pulpit orator, Dr. van Dyke enjoys a reputation second to none in America; and an address on "Christianity and Literature," delivered before the Pan-Presbyterian Alliance in Liverpool, England, was declared by the British Weekly (London, July 7, 1904)、

to have touched "the oratorical high-water mark" of the convention. His oratory, with no effort to produce artificial effects, is characterized by a strong virility, and by a certain moral vivacity and dash which makes it peculiarly effective in college chapels. "His thought is not only strikingly objective in statement, but has in it the resonant quality of a conviction which enlists the imagination and the emotions as well as the intellect. The secret of his power lies in the prime qualities of the man: his courage, loyalty, sincerity in life and art; above all, his tireless pursuit of complete and adequate self-expression."

Ye are the salt of the earth. MATTHEW V. 13.

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1. 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 5 set a high value upon it and sought for it in caves and by the seashore. The nation that had a good supply of it 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 10 because their religion laid particular emphasis on cleanliness, and because salt was largely used in their sacrifices.

2. Christ chose an image which was familiar when He said to His disciples, "Ye are the salt of the earth." This was His conception of their mission, their influence. They were to 15 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 character 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 20 needed there. Its mission is to permeate, season, and purify things on earth.

3. Now, from one point of view, it was an immense compliment for the disciples to be spoken to in this way. Their

Master showed great confidence in them. He set a high value upon them. The historian Livy could find nothing better to express his admiration for the people of ancient Greece than this very phrase. He called them sal gentium, "the salt of the nations."

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4. But it was not from this point of view that Christ was speaking. He was not paying compliments. He was giving a clear and powerful call to duty. His thought was not that His disciples should congratulate themselves on being better than other men. He wished them to ask themselves whether they 10 actually had in them the purpose and the power to make other men better. Did they intend to exercise a purifying, seasoning, saving influence in the world? Were they going to make their presence felt on earth and felt for good? If not, they would be failures and frauds. The savor would be out of them. 15 They would be like lumps of rock salt which has lain too long in a damp storehouse; good for nothing but to be thrown away and trodden under foot; worth less than common rock or common clay, because it would not even make good roads.

5. Men of privilege without power are waste material. Men 20 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. If they pass for Christians they are guilty of obtaining respect under false pre- 25 tenses. They were meant to be the salt of the earth. And the first duty of salt is to be salty.

6. This is the subject on which I want to speak to you to-day. The saltiness of salt is the symbol of a noble, powerful, truly religious life.

7. 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 to-day as it costs to educate the average man, and a hundred times as much as it costs to raise a boy without

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