Christian Influence

In the greatest sermon ever preached, Jesus Christ said 'you are the salt of the earth' (Matthew 5:14). He most assuredly was speaking to the fact of the Christian's influence in the culture.

I am not sure who Elihu Burrit is, but he makes the following statement (as quoted in The New Testament Commentary Matthew 1-7, by John F. MacArthur) :

"No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness, not only of the present but of every subsequent age of humanity. No one can detach himself from this connection. There is no sequestered spot in the universe, no dark niche along the disc of nonexistence to which he can retreat from his relations with others, where he can withdraw the influence of his existence upon the moral destiny of the world. Everywhere his presence or absence will be felt. Everywhere he will have companions who will be better or worse because of him. It is an old saying, and one of the fearful and fathomless statements of import, that we are forming characters for eternity. Forming characters? Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies peril and responsibility of our existence. Who is sufficient for the thought? Thousands of my fellow beings will yearly enter eternity with characters differing from those they would have carried thither had I never lived."

Am I making a difference?
Are you?

Mark