"A Roman proverb couples sunlight and salt together as the two things which keep the world alive and sweet. Homer calls it Divine; the substance clear to the gods; spoke of it as the emblem of righteousness, and our common phraseology, following the Greek and Latin writers, has chosen it as the symbol of wit and wisdom, of all that gives grace to speech, refinement to thought, pungency to writing, and individuality to character.

The idea, then, which the metaphor on the Savior's lips suggests is that His disciples (that is us) are the noble and indispensable element in the world; they sweeten, purify, and enrich its work, its thoughts, its social intercourse, its joys, its laws and literature. They save it from corruption, decomposition, and moral death. The great sea of life, like the sea which washes our shores, would become putrid without it."