The Watchtower Society and John and Morton Edgar - A2Z.org

to the world as they have opportunity, whue at the sameb e they add to their own spiritual strength and sustaintheir own spiritual life. Jesus, speaking to his disciples,said : " If ye were of the world, the world would love hisown ; but because ye are not of the world, but I halechosen you out of the world, therefore the world hatethyou. Remember the word that I said unto yon, Theservant b not greater that his Lord. If they have persecutedme, they will also persecute you (John 16 : 18-26).But by returning good for evil, blessing those that cursethem, doing good to those that hate them, and prayingfor those who despitefully use them, the foot-step followersof the gentle Jesus reprove the world of sin, and exercisea preservative influence over the world, preventing it fromgoing rapidly into deeper moral degradation and death.Jesus declared this truth when, after telling his followersthat God's true prophets had always been persecuted forrighteousness' sake, and bidding them rejoice and beexceeding glad when they were reviled and persecutedfor his sake, he added : " Ye are the salt of the earth "(Matt. 5 : 10-13). Just as salt exercises a preservativeinfluence on flesh, and as plants exercise a preservativeinfluence on animals, so the saints of God have all alongexercised a preservative influence on the world, for thefew righteous men in the world have preserved it fromdestruction. That is what Paul meant when he quotedIsaiah : " Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed.we had been as Sodom, and been made like unto Gomorrah(Rom. 9 : 29). It was because there were not eveoten righteous men in Sodom that the Lord destroyed it(Gen. 18 : 16-32).Before leaving this part of our subject, I should like tcdraw your attention to two other points of importance.The first is that the proportion of Carbonic Acid gas inthe atmosphere is vcrv Amall. only one five-hnndredth thatof Oxygen. So is it also in the spiritual atm )sphere of