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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
The Reverend Frank R. Lackey

C^e tfttonott of
f te (Bractou^ 2BorD0

®fje OTonber of
His Gracious OTorbs
3Un €rpo£ition of €he Sermon
on the amount
BY
JOHN EDGAR PARK

€^e pilgrim &tm
BOSTON
NEW YORK CHICAGO

Copyright, 1909
By Luther H. Cary

THI VNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, 0.8. A.

PREFACE
THIS is an exposition of the "Sermon
on the Mount," as it is found in the
Gospel according to St. Matthew. No
attempt is here made to go behind that
document and discover its history or
sources. That interesting work has been
done elsewhere. This is. an exposition of
the document as it stands, in the form in
which it has for centuries touched the heart
of the world. Expounding the meaning of
the Sermon on the Mount is like explaining
the meaning of a piece of music, in so far
as no exposition will satisfy everybody.
Like music, the Sermon touches our human
nature at points so deep and universal, and
leaves so much of setting and detail to the
imagination, that the concrete interpreta
tion and significance of it will be differently
expressed by every man. This book tries
to read it as the supreme exemplification of
the words of William Law, "Our Blessed
Saviour and his apostles are wholly taken
up in doctrines that relate to common life."
In the end the only proof of the validity
of the teaching lies in the person of the
[v]

preface
Teacher. But that divine personality re
veals itself most clearly to the reader when
no attempt is made to exhibit or prove it
by texts and passages, but when it is per
mitted to shine through all the teaching,
implicitly, in its own glory. The end of the
Sermon will be attained, if through it we
come to trust and love the Master, whose
word it is. J. E. P.
Second Church in Newton,
Wist Newton, Mass.

[vi]

CONTENTS Pagb
Prologue  i
The Beatitudes  23
I. Those who are Blessed . . 28
II. Those who Bless Others . . 94
The Law and the Gospel .... 101
Unostentatious Piety  137
Trust in God  163
Judging Others  173
The Way of Life  183

[vii]

PROLOGUE

' In Christ there is no East or West,
In him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.
In him shall true hearts everywhere
Their high communion find;
His service is the golden cord
Close binding all mankind."

CJe ^ontier off^ts Gracious
Mortis
PROLOGUE
"And seeing the multitudes, He went up into
a mountain:"
" A ^^ seeing the multitudes " — the
-ZjL multitudes of worries, of anxieties,
of tasks, to be met upon the morrow ; the
multitudes of men and women, sick in body
and in mind, materialized, vulgar, unspir-
itual, seeking, yet knowing not what they
seek; the multitudes of children, of un
spoiled, simple-hearted young people, need
ing such wise, human, consecrated guidance.
"Seeing the multitudes," let us, too, go
up into the mountain that in the quiet there
we may find new strength for our daily
needs. Ah, how worn that path up the Mount of
the Beatitudes has become, since the day
it was first trod by that little company of
[31

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men so many centuries ago ! It is worn deep
with the stumbling, climbing footsteps of
myriads throughout the ages, who have
struggled up out of the depressing fogs and
mists of the plain to breathe for a few mo
ments the pure sweet air of the mountain
side where the Master sits with his disciples.
Up that same winding path we, a little
band of twentieth-century pilgrims, start
to-day, seeking the Christ whom we need
for our lives. If we can but find him, if we
can but hear his words, surely we shall be
healed of all our troubles !
"The world is weary of new tracks of thought
That lead to naught, —
Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain
For mortal pain :
Yet still above them all one Figure stands
With outstretched hands."

"And when he was set his disciples came
unto him:"
How can we reconstruct for ourselves
the scene of this holiday summer school?
Certainly we have no shorthand report to
give us the exact words which were spoken;
no phonographic record to reproduce for
us the tones of the voice, which often mean
so much more than the mere words; no
[4]

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photograph to give us the exact details of
the scene. We have something better than
any of these could be. We have something
more accurate for our purpose than any
of these mechanical devices could give us.
We have four portraits of the Master
painted by those who knew him as a friend.
The photograph might tell more accurately
the minute details — of the hairs upon the
head, of the face, of the garments — but the
portrait painted by a friend tells the soul,
as love found it out through the long years.
The photograph shows the man as a ma
chine saw him, as casual outsiders saw him;
the portrait shows him as he looked into
the eyes of a friend. And the portraits
of the Gospels are still more wonderful be
cause they were made by men who were
themselves made by Christ. He had given
these artists their souls. He had made
them all they were by the unique power of
his personality.
What, then, do we know of Christ ? We
know with the most absolute accuracy the
exact impression made by his personality
upon the world of his time, as it is inter
preted for us by those who best understood
and loved him in it. This is the most
infallible form of biography. Anything
else would be more mechanical and less
accurate.
[5]

<€fje Wotfoet of p£ <&raciou0 Wozb$
The same is true of the teaching of Christ.
It is probable we do not even have it in the
original language in which he gave it. We
cannot be sure whether the Sermon on the
Mount was given all at one time or on vari
ous occasions. We cannot affirm that every
word in the English version exactly repro
duces the meaning in his mind when he
spoke. The details of the account may be
less accurate even than in a phonographic
record. But of one thing we are absolutely
sure with respect to this teaching. One has
only to read it thoughtfully to discover it.
It is that these words come from the deepest
personality ever known in the world. The
Jesus who is my Saviour, each one feels as
he reads, is the Jesus whose heart and mind
I recognize in the Sermon on the Mount.
This teaching is as new a thing in the world
as the sun was when it rose on the first
morning. There may have been scattered
lights before it — this is the Sun.
All arguments as to the sources and the
variations of the text, and such things,
are of minor importance compared with
the absolute certitude we have of the
presence of Christ's personality in the
Sermon on the Mount. That is the only
valid proof of its genuineness. In it the
deepest moral teaching of the world's
sages is unified, purified, and transcended
[6]

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by the force of a great personality. And
it has been transmitted to us just as the
portrait of Christ's character has been
handed down to us — not by mechanical
means, but through the love of living
human beings. Christ's purpose in giving
this teaching was not to write a famous
book, else he would have seen to it that
his exact style was preserved for all time.
Christ wanted not to create an infallible
book, but to create true lives, and to trust
them through the power of his spirit to
create other true lives till the world be
came altogether true. The Sermon comes
down to us, then, as Christ wrote it in the
living tissue of human lives. It was prob
ably circulated for years in the oral tradi
tion of the men and women of whose lives
that teaching had become a part.
Long noons and evenings after he was gone,
Mary the Mother, Matthew, Luke and John,
And all of those who loved him to the last,
Went over all the marvel of the past —
Went over all the old familiar ways
With tender talk of dear remembered days.
They walked the roads that never gave him rest —
Past Jordan's ford, past Kedron's bridge,
Up Olivet, up Hermon's ridge,
To that last road, the one they loved the best.
Edwin Markham.
At length it was committed to writing,
and is to-day the accurate impression made
[71

€fje frontier of ^ig aBraciou^ i©oro£
upon the earliest learners by the teaching of
Jesus. All peoples can find Jesus in it for
themselves. Certainly all the words which
Jesus said in his life are not preserved for
us; we have lost many of them. But in
those we have, we can find the Saviour.
Marvelously the inspiration of the New
Testament writers has saved them from
marring their record by hopeless mis
understanding and error. Their inspira
tion consisted in their reverence, their
humility, their love, towards him whose
words they tried to live and to teach.
Christ was in this scene a teacher, and
the quality that makes any teaching su
premely great is this, — that the class
should understand. Christ trusted to this
quality in his teaching to preserve it for
all time. His trust in his truth and in his
class has been justified. Still we under
stand, each century more perfectly ; still we
are striving to carry out more sincerely the
simple teaching of our Lord.
"And he opened his mouth and taught them. "
Ibbeken has developed the idea that the
author of the first Gospel had found in the
circumstances of Christ's life a certain
similarity to the run of events in Hebrew
history. In both there is a Flight to Egypt
with a Slaughter of the Innocents; in the
[8]

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one is a series of plagues and in the other a
succession of temptations ; in the one is a
passing through the Red Sea and in the
other a baptism in the Jordan. This Ser
mon on the Mount, he holds, corresponds
to the giving of the Law upon Mount
Sinai. But we must be careful lest we carry this
last analogy too far. If we hope to find in
this pronouncement of our Lord's an in
fallible code of laws to which we can refer
by chapter and verse as the ultimate author
ity in all matters of morals, we shall be as
disappointed as were the two Marys when
they came to the tomb to seek the body of
Jesus and were told, " He is not here. He
is risen, even as he said." Once we try to
find anywhere in this world infallible pro
nouncements upon personal moral ques
tions which will save us the responsibility
of individual thought and prayer and de
cision, we have departed from the spirit
of New Testament Christianity. We are
here in this world to get the training which
comes from making such decisions for our
selves. The man who consults the Sermon
on the Mount for the purpose of finding
there definite instructions as to what he
should do in a special case, for instance,
where another man has struck him upon
the right cheek — instructions which he
[9]

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will regard as final and authoritative and
which he will follow implicitly and unthink
ingly — that man is likely to be more con
fused than helped by the Sermon. He will
find himself soon in a host of difficulties;
he will be greatly exercised in mind when
he comes to study his instructions' for
such particular rules of conduct, first as
to the actual text, as to whether Christ
said, "Blessed are ye that hunger now,"
" Blessed are ye poor " (as Luke has it,
chap. 6 : 20, 21), or whether he really said,
"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst
after righteousness " ; " Blessed are the poor
in spirit" (as Matthew has it, chap. 5 : 3, 6).
Then he will be in great doubt of heart as
to whether he ought not to become a monk
in order to be able to obey literally some of
the commands of the Sermon which he finds
the responsibilities of modern life prevent
him from observing literally. In the life of
the world to-day he will find the intricate
rules and regulations of the Sermon on the
Mount as to deeds and words and thoughts
almost as great a burden to carry as the
Jewish law was to the Hebrews. He will
feel himself bound to give to every beggar,
to invite and welcome every injustice done
to himself or others, to obey every jot and
tittle in the law and the prophets, to cut
off his right hand and pluck out his right
[ 10 ]

€&e Wtmbtx of pg dBracioug lteorti£
eye, if they have led him into sin. He will
be hopelessly confused.
The reason of his bewilderment is this :
Christ did not mean the Sermon on the
Mount to be a written code of laws or con
stitution of his new kingdom. It is teach
ing, not law. It is truth placed in such a
form as to be easily understood by the class
of learners to whom it was addressed. The
meaning of the teaching is understood only
when it is viewed as a whole with reference
to the situation in which it was uttered.
The end of the teaching is attained, not
when each isolated written rule in it is
obeyed, but when the mind and heart from
which this teaching issued has produced in
us minds and hearts as sincere and humble
and courageous as were his. The unity of
the teaching lies in the personality of the
Teacher. The purpose of the teaching is
to convey to his hearers a new point of view
upon life.
One would think that the meaning of the
Teacher could hardly be misunderstood
when he emphasizes the many-sidedness of
the same truth in such a way, for instance,
as this :
i. But I say unto you, Love your enemies,
and pray for them that persecute you; that ye
may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven
(Matt. 5 : 43-45)-
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2. But I say unto you, Resist not him that
is evil : but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also (Matt. 5 : 39).
3. And if thy brother sin against thee, go,
show him his fault between thee and him alone :
if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or
two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or
three every word may be established. And if
he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church:
and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him
be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican
(Matt. 18: 15-17).
But it is easy to see that each one of these
passages, taken as an isolated precept, may
seem in many special cases to conflict with
the other two. The man, however, who
seeks for Christ's point of view in the Ser
mon will see that 2 and 3 are respectively
the passive and the active ways in which
the spirit of 1 may be shown in particular
cases. The teaching is one. The key to
its meaning is the Teacher's constant atti
tude towards life.
We climb the mountain path, then, not
to find precepts of morality which can be
unthinkingly applied to each particular
case in life. We go up to find the Saviour
whose attitude towards the particular prob
lems of his day and generation was true and
lovely altogether. We speak often of the
Word becoming man. In order to under-
[ « ]

€fje iBonoer of ^i£ <©racioug f©or&£
stand the Sermon on the Mount fully, we
must think of the Word becoming a man.
Christ's life was not merely a pattern-life,
a life of no meaning in itself except in so
far as it is a pattern for others to form their
lives upon. Christ was living an individual
human life, undergoing individual expe
riences, meeting individual problems, fac
ing individual joys and sorrows. "The
instinctive character never passed out of
the relationships of Christ." This teach
ing of his was not an elaborately thought-
out code of morals handed out to the human
race for their guidance for all time. It was
rather his solution, living with instinctive
wisdom, of one of his own personal life-
problems, namely, how to get these fol
lowers of his to see God's world as he saw
it. The teaching is full of paradox and
proverb, of touches of irony and of quiet
humor. To understand it we must first
have listened long enough to apprehend
the Speaker's type of thought and feel
ourselves members of his audience. But
when we have caught, even in the slightest
way, insight into his personality, then we
shall find in his teaching the deepest words
ever uttered. . .
We have seen that the Sermon on the
Mount is teaching, and not merely law;
[13]

€&e iteonber of $i$ <£raciou£ iBorog
we must impress this fact upon ourselves
by realizing that it is teaching and not
merely exhortation.
It is comparatively easy to clap a friend
upon the back in his day of misfortune, and
tell him not to worry. It is a much harder
thing to meet your friend's eyes as he looks
up to you and asks, "Why should I not
worry ? Is not my life filled with inexpli
cable misfortune and injustice?" Any
healthy, happy being can exhort. It takes
a religious thinker to teach and comfort.
The aim of Christ's teaching was prac
tical, and many have felt that all the dogmas
and doctrines of Christianity have been
added to it since his time. It is said that
we ought to forget them and return to the
simple practical religion of Christ again.
But no sooner have we examined the ap
parently simple and purely practical teach
ing of Christ than we find that he had
thought. Behind his practical teaching
are the truths which thought and experi
ence had led him to believe, and of which
he was sure. If we remove from Christ's
teaching its dogmas and doctrines about
God, the world, and man, we have no
gospel left.
No part of Christ's teaching seems less
theological and doctrinal than the beati
tudes, and yet, when we examine them,

€fje frontier of l^tg <£racioug iBorog
how tremendous is their dogmatism 1 To
each word of joyous appreciation and in
spiration is added a reason, and an analysis
of these reasons alone would give us Christ's
deeply experienced and thought-out phi
losophy of life. Take away Christ's doc
trines from the beatitudes and what have
we left ? We should have such statements
as these:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for they have
nothing to lose.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they are
coming to know the vanity of all things.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall be im
posed upon.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness : for they are children still.
All hope, all saving power, is gone. In
comparison with these how grand and glo
rious appear the great, calm affirmations of
Christ !
Religion can be taught, then, only by
those who are sure of certain fundamental
facts. An old man who was nearing the
end of his journey was giving his reminis
cences in his old age to his younger breth
ren. He told how, long ago in the days of his
youth, he had once heard Jenny Lind sing
— that woman whose life was as beautiful
as her wonderful voice. She sang that aria
from Handel's Messiah, "I know that my
[i5]

€J>e frontier: of p£ <JBrarioug J©orti£
Redeemer liveth." " Arid the know of that
woman's voice," he said, "has thrilled in my
life ever since, through all the years." It is
that great I know which must thrill through
the life and words of the teachers of re
ligion to-day if one's teaching is to be
effective. There lay the power of the early Church.
Those early Christians did not go about
merely hinting in a good-natured way as
to the duty of being kind and thought
ful, and hoping vaguely that everything
would turn out well in the end. There
were some things they knew, some facts
they had discovered, which meant so much
for them that they were ready to die rather
than relinquish their hold upon them.
Walter Pater pictures for us how a young
man, tired of the incurable insipidity of all
that was most exquisite even in the higher
Roman life, weary of that famed Greek
gaiety and blitheness in the handling of
life, came one day by chance upon a great
assemblage of Christians, the first he had
ever seen. They were assembled in the
vast domestic sanctuary of the Cecilian
family in Rome. "The peculiar half-light
of dawn seemed to be lingering beyond its
hour upon its solemn marble walls; and
here, though at that moment in absolute
silence, a great company of people was
[16] '

€Jje Wottiitt of W <&tatiou$ tBorog
assembled. And so it came to pass on this
morning, Marius saw for the first time the
wonderful spectacle — wonderful above all
for its evidential power — of those who be
lieve. There were noticeable, among those
assembled, great varieties of rank, of age,
of personal type. The Roman ingenuus,
with white toga and gold ring, stood side
by side with his slave; and the air of the
whole company was, above all, a grave one,
an air of recollection. Coming thus unex
pectedly upon this large assembly, so en
tirely united, in a silence so profound, for
some purpose unknown to him, Marius felt
as if he had stumbled by chance upon some
great conspiracy. Yet that could 'scarcely
be, for the people here collected might have
"figured as the earliest handsel, or pattern,
of a new world, from the very face of which
discontent had passed away. Correspond
ing to the variety of human type there pres
ent, was the various expression of every
type of human sorrow assuaged. What
desire and fulfilment of desire had wrought
so pathetically in the faces of these ranks
of aged men and women of humble condi
tion ? Those young men, bent down so
discreetly on the details of their sacred ser
vice, had faced life and were glad, by some
science, or light of knowledge they had, to
which there was certainly no parallel in the
[17]

€&e i©onbec of J^is? <©racioujS iteot&g
older world. There were children, above
all, with features not so much beautiful as
heroic — stretching forth their hands, cry
ing, chanting in a resonant voice, and with
boldly upturned faces, " Christe Eleison!"
The authority of Christ lay in his surety
of the great fundamentals of our faith.
He does not argue, he does not attempt to
convince by trains of reasoning. He has
lived; he has thought; he has experienced,
and he is himself the proof of that father
hood of God and sonship of man, which is
the unproved assumption of all his teaching.
Nobody can prove the fundamentals of re
ligion to the ordinary class by the rules of
logic. It is always necessary to make great
assumptions upon starting, and the per
sonality of the teacher must be the practical
proof to the class of the truth of these as
sumptions. Christ as a teacher shows us
that the best teacher of religion is the one
whose moral principles and theological be
liefs have so wrought themselves into the
fabric of his being that they are part of his
personal influence, and do their best work
without calling much attention to their own
abstract existence.- They manifest them
selves not so much in morals tacked on at
the ends of his stories, as in the energy, in
terest, and enthusiasm of the life and the
teaching. It was by this means that the
[18]

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authoritative certainty of Christ was com
municated to the early Church, and through
them to us.

Help us, O Lord, to find thee in this our
study of thy Word. We need thee. Thy
strength is made perfect in our weakness.
We have failed in our attempt to live daily
at those levels of faith which our souls are
competent to gain. We need the power
of thy great faith in God our Father to
strengthen us. We need the encouragement
of thy wonderful faith in .man to give us
heart again. We need the sympathy of thy
forgiveness for us and for all men to com
fort us. Lord, help us, we are of little
faith, we are distressed beyond measure, we
sink. Oh, lift us up out of our discourage
ment, out of our doubts, out of our listless-
ness. Give us new visions, new strength,
new faith, new enthusiasm. May the song
of our lives from this day forward be, " I
know whom I have believed, and I am
persuaded that he is able to keep that which
I have committed unto him." Amen.

THE TEACHER
Lord, who am I to teach the way
To little children day by day,
So prone myself to go astray ?
[19]

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I teach them knowledge, but I know
How faint they flicker and how low
The candles of my knowledge glow.
I teach them power to will and do,
But only now to learn anew
My own great weakness through and through.
I teach them love for all mankind
And all God's creatures, but I find
My love comes lagging far behind.
Lord, if their guide I still must be,
Oh, let the little children see
The teacher leaning hard on thee.
Leslie Pinckney Hill.

So far upon our way we have been
climbing together the path up the moun
tainside. We have been talking together
about the aim of our pilgrimage. We have
been preparing ourselves for the Master's
presence, for the teaching we are to hear
when we join his little band of disciples
upon the topmost slope. Ah, how sweet
has the mountain air become as we have
journeyed on ! With what happy antici
pation in our hearts have we thought to
gether of the great experience soon to be
ours ! Here we are at last ! It is just
such scenes as this that the Master loves
— the summit of the hills with the fresh-
[20]

C&e Wtmbtt of $i# oBracioug t©orbg
ness of the heaven upon it and the broad
open spaces all around. So, unexpect
edly, in a sheltered slope overlooking the
wide-spreading, peopled plain below, we
come upon the little company. Robert
Bird has drawn a beautiful picture of the
scene for us : —
"Upon a green mound on the hillside,
under the blue Syrian sky, Jesus sat above
the crowd gathered on the fragrant thymy
floor of that great church between the
hills; and never has there been such an
open-air teaching in the world's history —
the young carpenter of Nazareth, with
his outer cloak of dark blue thrown back,
showing the white inner tunic that came
down to his sandaled feet, despised by the
professors of theology and doctors of the
law because he quoted not from the reason
ings of men, yet confident because he
taught the truths of God, as he explained
to the people the great principles of the
new message which he and his disciples
would deliver to them. His face is calm
and beautiful as he looks down upon the
people, and in the hush that follows the
raising of his hand his voice rings out
clear and distinct, heard for a long dis
tance, amid the stillness of the hills."
Such is the scene that meets us as we
come up the mountain path. The Master
[21]

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has just gathered the disciples together,
and seated in the midst is about to teach
them. Let us hasten that we too, the
latest comers of all, may join their little
band and hear these wonderful words of
life.

[2*1

THE BEATITUDES
"Love manifests itself in pining righteousness
and blessedness together."
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into
the mountain: and when he had sat down, his
disciples came unto him: and he opened his
mouth and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall
be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit
the earth.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness : for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain
mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall
see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be
called sons of God.
Blessed are they that have been persecuted for
righteousness' sake : for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach
you, and persecute you, and say all manner of
evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice,
and be exceeding glad : for great is your reward
in heaven : for so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you.

There is nothing of the hardness of Stoicism,
the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's gospel. It
is humane, sympathetic, consoling. He begins
his great discourse with a series of beatitudes.
" Blessed " is the word ; " Happy " is the meaning.
Nine times he rings the changes on that word,
like a silver bell sounding from the campanile of
his fair temple on the mountainside, calling all
who long for happiness to come to him and find
rest for their souls. Henry Van Dyke.

"This man smells not of books. A green
And lusty show he bears;
As one whose foot hath wandering been
Where vitalizing airs
Sweep the far-purpled hills. His God
He cabins not in creeds;
But feels him where the fir-trees nod,
And where the south wind speeds
O'er blossomy fields. In waves and winds
For gospel texts he looks;
And in the hearts of men he finds
What no man found in books."

THE BEATITUDES
CHRISTIANITY is an open-air reli
gion. The Bible is an open-air book.
The winds of heaven blow among its pages.
It talks of flowers and the infinite open
spaces ; of plains and storm-clouds sweep
ing over the sky; of the rising sun and
the white dove-like sails of the boats upon
the sea; of the waving branches of the
trees and the deep singing of the wind
among the mountains, and of the sky
filled with the stars; of green hills and
cornfields, of sparrows and swallows, of
fishermen upon the lake, of country roads
and farms — it is filled with the spirit of
the open air.
Here in this scene upon the Mount of
the Beatitudes, where we find ourselves
to-day, we seem to be at the birthplace of
Christianity. The new faith which is to
revolutionize the world is born here in the
open air, in the heart of One who was an
open-air man, our Lord Jesus. The first
word of the new faith is Blessed, Happy,
and all the happiness, healthiness, stal-
wartness, breadth, of the out-of-doors life
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have passed into our faith. Other re
ligions were born in the over-heated
brain of the student in his lamp-lit study.
Our religion came to birth in the life of
One who loved the broad open expanses
from the mountain-top; who loved Jeru
salem, the city set on a hill; who spent
his evenings on the slopes of Olivet, from
which he could see the great landscape of
his native land spreading out before him.
Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open
Road" contains much of the point of
view we all must gain if we are to under
stand the religion of Jesus. Listen to the
sweep of its words :
Now I see the secret of the making of the best
persons :
It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and
sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room;
Here is the test of wisdom ;
Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools;
Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it
to another not having it;
Wisdom is of the soul ; it is not susceptible of
proof, is its own proof;
Something there is in the float of the sight of
things that provokes it out of the soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions;
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not
prove at all under the spacious clouds and
along the landscape and flowing currents.
Here is realization;
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Here is a man tallied — he realizes here what
he has in him —
The past, the future, majesty, love.

Oh, our Father, the Father of our Mas
ter Christ, we pray thee that we may
come to know and love this thy world.
Give us eyes to see and hearts to feel, that
we may awake in it every morning as in
heaven because of the wonder of it. May
all nature be to us, not for use and idle en
joyment merely, but as a continual sacra
ment. May it express to us daily thy
great joy in beauty and grace, in truth and
efficiency. We long for such a fresh, clean,
virile faith as that of Christ our Lord's —
a faith born out of doors in the midst of
nature, in the companionship and service
of human life. May we prove ourselves
kin to all that is simple and effective and
lovely in the world around us. And may
the beauty of the Lord our God be upon
us. For his sake. Amen.

[27]

I. THOSE WHO ARE BLESSED
I
Blesses ape trje poor in spirit: for ttytitsi is
the l&ing&om of I^eatjen
IN Zimmermann's picture of Christ and
the Fishermen, the artist has tried to
bring out for us the deep, almost startled
attention which our Lord was able to gain
for his teaching from the common men and
women of the world. From the faces of
these fishermen we can see that they are
hearing something which is making them
think. It is new to them; it strikes them
as interesting; they feel that there is some
thing in it.
One of the methods which our Lord
used to command this attention from the
people was the method of paradox. He
would make some statement which was
the direct contradictory of that usually
received, and having gained people's at
tention in this way, he would proceed to
substantiate his first extraordinary state
ment by showing the falsity of that usually
accepted by the world and the far deeper
truth of his own position. The Sermon
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on the Mount is full of such cases of para
dox. The classes of people whom Christ
pronounces happy are largely just those
who would be deemed particularly un
fortunate in the ordinary social conversa
tion of life even in our time.
"No picture of Christ is clearer in the
Gospels," says Phillips Brooks, "than that
in which he is seen standing face to face
with human life and uttering his call to
men. 'Be better than your world,' he
cries; 'break through the slavery of your
class and time and set; enjoy the glorious
liberty of children of God ! ' "
In order to get his hearers to feel the at
mosphere of this newer and larger world,
Christ places his own point of view at the
beginning of his discourse in the sharpest
possible contrast to that which his audience,
as a matter of course, are accustomed to
take. "Happy is the man who is able to
push his own claims : for he shall get on,"
this is our usual judgment. "No," answers
our Lord, startling us by his paradox,
"Happy are the meek: for they shall in
herit the earth." So in this first beatitude,
against the seeming success and peace of
mind of the self-satisfied man, Christ
places his own conviction of the real truth,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven." [ 29 ]

€fje ffltmbtt of f$i0 <6raciou£ Watb0
What did Christ mean by this state
ment ? We have seen that some people
will have great doubts as to what Christ
really said. In Luke 6: 20, we find it
reported that Christ really said, "Blessed
are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of
God." It may be that Christ made both
of these statements, each at a different
time. It is far more likely that both mean
the same thing, translated by each reporter
in his own way. We know enough of the
inwardness of Christ's gospel to have un
derstood the meaning of this beatitude
even if we had had only Luke's Version of
it. The key of this whole sermon lies in
Christ's teaching that it is the state of the
heart that determines destiny. Even if we
had only Luke's version of this saying, we
would never have supposed that Christ
meant to say that all poor people were
saints and all rich people sinners. Even
then we should have understood that •
Christ referred to the state of the heart.
There is a man who is rich in his own
esteem, and there is a man who is poor in
his own esteem — " Blessed is the poor
man." So it does not matter very much
whether our Lord made the general
statement of Matthew, or in some particu
lar circumstances used Luke's shortened
form of the same truth. Those who have
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taken the trouble to remain in the class for
some time and learn the Teacher's point of
view cannot mistake the meaning.
Our Lord never denounces riches as
such. Man has various ways of exercis
ing his power. Brain-power is intellectual
power; muscle and nerves are physical
power. Character is moral power; money
is economic power. Now the breadth and
humannessof Christ's teaching lie in the fact
that he does not denounce absolutely any of
the means of hjuman power. He is severe
upon the body : " If thy right hand causeth
thee to stumble, cut it off and cast it from
thee." But he is not an ascetic. "The
Son of man came eating and drinking."
He is severe in his judgment upon
brain-power. "I thank thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven," he prays, "that thou
didst hide these things from the wise and
understanding, and didst reveal them unto
babes." But our Lord is no mere mystic.
He appeals everywhere to the common
sense and thought of men, so that several
times his intellectual adversaries were put
to silence and durst not ask him any
more questions because of the intellectual
dexterity of his replies. His assertion was
that knowledge is merely an instrument
for moral and human uplift. All mere
heaping together of loads of learned lum-
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ber, of vain traditions and obscure useless
facts, is to no purpose; it leads too often
to self-conceit, which effectually closes the
soul against the entrance of true wisdom
(Matt. 23 : 13-33)-
In the same manner Christ is hard upon
riches. " How hardly shall they that have
riches enter into the kingdom of God ! "
Yet in other places he commends the right
use of riches. "But when the disciples
saw it, they had indignation, saying, To
what purpose is this waste ? For this
ointment might have been sold for much,
and given to the poor. But Jesus per
ceiving it said unto them, Why trouble
ye the woman ? for she hath wrought a
good work upon me. . . . Verily I say
unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be
preached in the whole world, that also
which this woman hath done shall be
spoken of for a memorial of her."
What Christ really does condemn, then,
is the selfish use of physical power in the
bully or the sensualist, the selfish use of
intellectual power in the self-centered
scholar or mere idle controversialist, and
the selfish use of riches when they become,
in the hands of their owner, not "wealth,"
but (as Ruskin calls it) "illth," because
they harm the character of their owner
and hurt every one else.
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To the true follower of Christ, physical
health, intellectual strength, and material
wealth are all means to his greater useful
ness in the world. Sometimes it seems as
though there was so much urgent, imme
diate need in the world for the activity of
a Christian man that there is no time for
any man to grow strong of body, or to
spend years in mental training, or to heap
up the material of economic power. But
to each there is his own place for which he
is fitted — some to teach, some to inspire,
some to think, some to explore, some to
"moralize" capital and skill, some to build
the schools and hospitals with their con
secrated wealth. Professor Peabody has
expounded for us the teaching of Christ
as to the use of wealth. Christ would
have us use it, (i) for charity and helpful
ness towards those who need; (2) for the
ministry to happiness and beauty, as the
woman with the box of spikenard used it.
"The limit of luxury," he says, "is the
power of sharing it"; (3) for the business
of life to which one is called. There is a
greater need for honest business men than
there is for generous philanthropists. No
church-building or alms can make up for
dishonesty in the acquisition.
There are two sides to Christ's real
meaning in this beatitude. He com-
3 [33]

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mends the needy life ~— the life that is not
self-sufficient, but feels how poor it is by
itself and how much it needs others.
And he commends, secondly, the simple
life — the life that is not burdened by a
great load of material possessions, but
recognizes that in itself it is a poor human
soul. First, the conviction of my great
need of others, of my fellow men and of
God; and, second, the recognition of my
essential detachment from my own mate
rial success — this being not the riches of
my soul, of myself, but the trust, the test
given me from above — these are Christ's
first conditions of happiness.
In the first place, then, Christ does not
mean to commend the poor-spirited, but
rather those who are poor in their own
esteem. "He that setteth not by him
self, but is lowly in his own eyes," to
quote the Prayer-book version of the Fif
teenth Psalm — the people who in our
modern phrase do not know it all, the
people who are teachable, who feel they
want help, who need the love and interest
of others to make their lives worth living,
who are open-minded, impressionable,
yearning for sympathy and help — these
are the people whom Christ deems happy
in their attitude towards life.
In addition to this more general mean-
[ 34 ]

€fje Wortotv of $i0 <©racioug Wotb0
ing, Luke's version seems to indicate that
Christ also had in view the happiness of
the man who did not wholly identify his
riches and success with himself, who was
not burdened by his material possessions,
so as to feel big and rich.
Christ, then, commends here those who
do not begin to think that they are big
people because of their money or their
audiences or their fame. They are happy
who do not feel "How great a person I
must be to have all this wealth or popu
larity or power!" but who feel rather,
"What a great opportunity this is God
has given to a poor soul ! " This power of
detaching oneself and others from the
material accidents of circumstance, and
judging of the real wealth or poverty of
the essential self, is a most precious power.
Gelett Burgess has pointed out that the
really interesting man is he who can see
people separated from their material set
ting; who can think of the duchess without
her title; who can listen to the words of
the rich man and judge of them without
being constrained to whisper to his neigh
bor, " They say he 's worth a million ! "
It is told of the days when Concord was
the home of Emerson, that a zealot in
Boston received a revelation that the world
was coming to an end that night. He felt
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it his duty immediately to go and tell
Emerson about it. Arriving at Concord,
he rushed to Emerson's house, and burst
ing in at the door of his study, he cried out,
"Oh, Mr. Emerson, I 've just had a revela
tion that the world is going to come to an
end to-night!" "Well," said the sage,
looking up calmly and serenely from his
study table where he sat writing, "we
shall get on very well without it." That
is the true poverty of spirit commended in
this beatitude; it is the possession of the
soul which is not wholly dependent upon
the material things of life for its very
existence. The "Kingdom of heaven" is a term
which Christ never explains, but defines
by his discriminating use of it. It means
the things worth while both here and here
after. The best commentary upon this
first beatitude is to be found in the message
to the church in Laodicea, in- Revelation
3: 17:
"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and
have gotten riches, and have need of
nothing; and knowest not that thou art
the wretched one and miserable and poor
and blind and naked : I counsel thee to
buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou
mayest become rich; and white garments,
that thou mayest clothe thyself, . . . and
[36]

€|>e JBonber of $$i0 <&tatimi0 Wotii0
eyesalve to anoint thine eyes that thou
mayest see."
Some of the poor in spirit are so devoid
of imagination or gift of vision that it
seems to them they must wait till the next
world to realize their "Kingdom of
heaven." Others come into a large part of
their heritage even here. Charles Louns-
berry was once a member of the Chicago
bar, who in later years lost his mind and
was committed to an insane asylum, where
he died penniless. His last moments were
lucid, and in them he penned his last will
and testament, which shows that in spite
of much misfortune in this life he at
least had realized part of his heritage and
was passing on his life-interest in the
"Kingdom of heaven" in this life:
I, Charles Lounsberrv, being of sound and
disposing mind and memory, do hereby make
and publish this, my last will and testament, in
order, as justly as may be, to distribute my in
terest in the world among succeeding men.
That part of my interest which is known in
law and recognized in the sheep-bound volumes
as my property, being inconsiderable and of
none account, I make no disposition of in this,
my will. My right to live, being but a life estate,
is not at my disposal, but these things excepted,
all else in the world I now proceed to devise and
bequeath. Item: I give to good fathers and mothers in
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trust for their children, all good little words of
praise and encouragement, and all quaint pet
names and endearments, and I charge said par
ents to use them justly, but generously, as the
needs of their children shall require.
Item : I leave to children inclusively, but only
for the term of their childhood, all and every, the
flowers of the fields, and the blossoms of the
woods, with the right to play among them freely
according to the customs of children, warning
them at the same time against thistles and thorns.
And I devise to children the banks of the brooks
and the golden sands beneath the waters thereof,
and the odors of the willows that dip therein, and
the white clouds that float high over the giant
trees. And I leave to children the long, long
days to be merry in, in a thousand ways, and the
night, and the moon, and the train of the Milky
Way to wonder at, but subject, nevertheless, to
the rights hereinafter given to lovers.
Item : I devise to boys jointly, all the useful,
idle fields and commons where ball may be
played; all pleasant waters where one may
swim ; all snow-clad hills where one may coast ;
and all streams and ponds where one may fish,
or where, when grim winter comes, one may
skate, to have and to hold these same for the
period of their boyhood. And all meadows, with
the clover blossoms and butterflies thereof; the
woods with their appurtenances, the squirrels
and the birds and echoes and strange noises, and
all distant places which may be visited, together
with the adventures there found. And I give
to said boys each his own place at the fireside at
night, with all the pictures that may be seen
in the burning wood, to enjoy without let or
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€he i©onbet of $)i£ (©racioug 3Bort>£
hindrance, and without any encumbrance of
care. Item: To lovers, I devise their imaginary
world with whatever they may need, as the stars
of the sky, the red roses by the wall, the bloom
of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and
aught else they may desire to figure to each other
the lastingness and beauty of their love.
Item: To young men, jointly, I devise and
bequeath all boisterous, inspiring sports of
rivalry, and I give to them the disdain of weak
ness and undaunted confidence in their own
strength. Though they are rude, I leave to
them the power to make lasting friendships, and
of possessing companions, and to them ex
clusively, I give all merry songs and brave
choruses to sing with lusty voices.
Item : And to those who are no longer children,
or youths, or lovers, I leave memory, and I be
queath to them the volumes of the poems of
Burns and Shakespeare and of other poems, if
there be others, to the end that they may live the
old days over again, freely and fully without
title or diminution.
Item : To our loved ones with snowy crowns,
I bequeath the happiness of old age, the love
and gratitude of their children until they fall
asleep.

[39l

II
HBlestfeU are tljep trjat mourn : for trjeg sftall
be comforteD
SOME people have thought that this life
is a mere drill-ground. It has seemed
to them that a series of agonizing tests are
here being imposed upon us by One who
watches from above to see how we stand
the temptation and the suffering. From
this point of view it is almost impossible not
to think of God sometimes as a cruel vivi-
sectionist, imposing at times unnecessarily
refined tortures upon his creatures. Why
should this noble man be subjected to all
this continued suffering in his old age ?
Why should this anguish come upon one so
pure and tender-hearted ? Why should
this innocent child be actually born into
disease and vice? What possible moral
end can be achieved by killing off in agony a
few hundreds of helpless men and women
and children in a Martinique earthquake ?
Christianity's answer to these continual
questions of ours is this: This life is not
a mere drill-ground — it is a battle-field.
The distress and agony of the battle-field
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€he frontier of 1$ig <JBractou^ t©orb£
are not imposed upon his troops by the
captain ; they are the proofs of the reality
of the struggle, of the presence of the
enemy; they are borne by the captain and
his men in equal measure. Our God is
not an idle spectator of this scene of man,
imposing arbitrarily more or less testing
of his men through suffering. Our God
is our comrade in a common task, our
fellow sufferer in its tragedy, our Captain,
wounded, distressed, sorrowful at times,
even as we. This is the wonderful comfort
of the teaching and of the cross of Christ.
But is our God then omnipotent ? If we
mean by omnipotence the power of doing
anything, that is, the power of self-contra
diction, then God is not omnipotent. If
we mean by omnipotence the power of
doing anything in a moment of time, with
out sharing the privilege or responsibility of
doing it with any one else, then God is not
omnipotent. Mere arbitrary, big, brute
force is not omnipotence. The power of
creating a man thirty years old in a moment
of time, or of creating in a moment of
time a cosmos out of a chaos, a world of
self-controlled beings with character and
knowledge and with the sense of moral
responsibility for attainment — if omnipo
tence means the possession of such mean
ingless powers as these, then our God is
[ 4i ]

€&e IBonber of l$i0 dBtaciou0 Woxbg
not omnipotent. If he were, he would be
less self-controlled and less personal even
than we are in our attempts to train our
children. God's omnipotence consists rather in
personal and moral attributes; in his in
finite trust in his fallible creatures; in his
absolute certitude of the ultimate victory of
his good spirit in and through them ; in his
infinite and inexhaustible patience with
them in spite of their continual failures ; in
his infinite sympathy and power of under
standing fellow suffering in and with them.
This world would be perfectly painless for
us all, if God gave up his difficult task of
trusting and developing free beings, and if
he reduced us all to unconscious machines,
automata, fitted to accomplish his great
ends unknowingly. When we rebel against
God on account of the sorrow of life, this
is what we are really asking him to do. We
are asking the Captain if he could not ac
complish the ends of the campaign as well
without his soldiers. God's omnipotent
power of self-control prevents him from
doing this. He continues to trust us, to let
us share his labor and his sufferings, though
to do so means that the work goes slowly
forward, and the golden time when our race
shall have gained for itself harmony with
itself and its surroundings seems still far
[42]

€&e t©onbet of J^ig <©racioug H&orbg
off in the future. But it must gain that
power and that knowledge for itself. God's
omnipotent self-restraint is seen in the
manner in which he has made us our
own masters here, and has given us the
chance to work out our own problems our
selves without interference. His omnipotent
power is seen in the way in which he has
placed at our disposal all the wisdom and
power and comfort of the universe, to be
gained by us through our own persistent
efforts. He is with us in the fight, and
all his skill and victorious insight are ours
for the earning. The battle-cry of the Old
Testament is that of Deborah: "To the
help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord
against the mighty!" and the battle-cry
of the New Testament is in the words of
Jesus : " My Father worketh hitherto and
I work!" Our Lord again in this beatitude uses the
method of paradox. In opposition to the
usual judgment of the world he says,
"Blessed are the people who are having a
hard time." Is it a mere paradox, or does he
really mean it ? All his teaching shows that
he means it, he believes that peace of mind
can be gained through every experience of
suffering. There is balm in Gilead; there
is comfort for every sorrow in this world.
It is possible for any one, if he be only
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brave enough and patient enough, to at
tain to peace of mind and heart.
If we are frank, we will confess that some
of our suffering is not going to cease till we
learn to behave ourselves. The sorrow of
selfishness, the sorrow of the child that is
kicking and screaming because it cannot
have the moon — let us understand that re
ligion does not provide any angel in heaven
to appear miraculously and comfort such
sorrow. The great comfort for most of our
sorrows is to get up, and get to work, and
think less of ourselves and more of others.
Blessed is the man or woman who has got
so far as to make the discovery that he or she
is unhappy when selfish. Even this is a
step towards the comfort that will come
with the new life. Blessed is the soul who
has found that the way of self-pity is most
miserable ; there is no cure for that misery
but to stop whining and help some of the
world's real sufferers. Some of the spirit
of this self-suggestive formula of W. E.
Henley is needed:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud;
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Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How filled with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul !
There is at least no whining there.
The sorrow of selfishness, of self-pity,
and of envy — these sorrows are forms of
bad temper, and comfort comes when we
make up our minds to behave ourselves.
The cause of all the suffering in the world
is the unfinished. God is working to-day
in the early morning hours of the sixth day
of creation. Things are still greatly unfin
ished. The great Sabbath rest when all
things can be pronounced very good lies
still in the far-off future. The sorrows we
have spoken of are the result of the unfin
ished state of affairs in our own characters.
The unhappiness is the call to us to put
things in order in our own hearts, to seek the
new comfort and trust of forgiveness, and
to do our share in the work that will make
us truly human.
But without us, also, things are not fin
ished. The human race has not as yet won
knowledge enough to live in harmony with
its surroundings. Disease, accident, and
disaster overtake us on all hands, bringing
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terror and sorrow to us all. Though con
stantly learning, we have not as yet learned
enough to avoid these.
These are the unaccountable sorrows that
cause the real mourning of the world. Those
deep and terrible experiences in forms to
each other so unknown, which have come
into all our lives, these individual, unro-
mantic troubles — it is about them that
Christ speaks when he says, "Blessed are
they that mourn : for they shall be com
forted." The deepest thing in such expe
riences is comfort. This thing is a secret.
It cannot be spoken to the uninitiated. The
mystical word that tries to express it best
is "fellowship." Somehow it is together
with our race that we suffer for some great
end that as yet is only half-revealed. It
is only through our sufferings and in them
that the race can gain the knowledge to
destroy them for the future. Every noble
sufferer is a savior, though he himself can
least of all understand how. Time shows
some of the glorious results won through
suffering ; eternity will show all. Oh, how
the common hardships and sufferings of the
Civil War have bound many of the partici
pants together as lifelong comrades and
friends ! In some such wise does suffering
bind us all closer together here, because
through that suffering we have somehow
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€t>e iBonbcr of tyi0 4Btatimi0 iEorbg
the pledge of kinship one with another, of
common struggle for a common end ; in it
we have the proof that we have our part in
the ultimate victory.
Fellowship with our comrades, and
equally fellowship with our God — these
are the symbols of the mystery of this com
fort. "Suffering we cannot avoid, for suf
fering there must ever be; still it does rest
with ourselves to choose what our suffer
ing shall bring us." To some suffering has
brought spitefulness and selfishness of
character. To some it has brought this
secret of deep and real human and divine
fellowship. Then words of the world's
seers that have been hard before to us
begin to grow plain.
"God, thou art love ! I build my faith on that.
Even as I watch beside thy tortured child,
Unconscious whose hot tears fall fast beside
him,
So doth thy right hand guide us through the
world
Wherein we stumble."
Then we begin to be able to understand
something of the meaning of the old story
of how Tristram in his exile procures as a
present to Iseult a wonderful dog around
whose neck there hangs a magic bell. The
sound of this silver bell is so sweet that it
causes all sorrow to be forgotten. Iseult is
[47]

€tjc IBonber of f$i0 «Braciou£ 3@otb£
greatly pleased with the gift for a few days.
But after a while she removes gently the
bell from the dog's neck, unwilling to hear
and to forget, for the golden remembrance
of her sorrows past is sweeter far to her
than is the silver music of present joys. It
has all been said very simply and beauti
fully in the following quotation from a
letter written anonymously to a weekly
paper :
"It is not fair, it is not fair," protests a be
wildered soul, confronted by poverty, sickness,
and bereavement. " I have tried all my life to be
good and to do right. My husband never stooped
to a mean trick in all his afFairs, yet he lost every
thing in the panic. . . . And there are those
Smiths across the street, selfish, vulgar, unscru
pulous, with every luxury at their command and
never an anxiety to trouble them. Either God is
dead or he is cruel."
At first we almost feel as she does, we are so in
the habit of thinking that virtue ought to be paid
in house-rent and groceries. But, on the whole,
while we are with the poor distracted soul in our
hearts, our minds do know (or ought to know)
that her mind has slipped over to a wrong track
of expectancy. She thinks that bank accounts,
like the bonbons of babyhood, should be be
stowed by heaven on the morally deserving;
whereas they are oftenest the result of the exer
cise of certain specific kinds of mental acumen X
trained habit + physical ability + opportunity,
with no more essential dependence on a man's
morals than on the color of his hair and eyes.
[48]

€ftc IBonber of %i0 oBracioug IBorbg
The fact that a man is pure in heart will never of
itself enable him to command the income of a
violin virtuoso or of an expert mechanical engi
neer. But the pure in heart does have treasure
promised long ago to men of his kind. Only it
is difficult to talk about that, because, as the peace
of God passes understanding, it also passes ex
pression in common, every-day phrases.
I cannot put the case as strongly as it deserves
to be put, for I am not used to expounding such
things. I am only a listener in a rear pew. But
I do feel sure, in spite of — no, rather because of
— knowing the feel of hard roads to tired feet,
that, even though he slay us in our hopes for
material success and ease, still he holds us in his
arms. He never promised that we should not
see hard times. He does promise, to every soul
that really knows him, to be the Father of all our
souls, whether he gives us what we want or says,
"Not yet."
Life is good, all of it — all its devious paths
and issues. And the morrow is added to the
morrow to make eternity, but always a new
world, a new light, a new life !
Robert Herrick.

Who can really think, and not think hopefully ?
When we despair or discolor things, it is our
senses in revolt, and they have made the sovereign
brain their drudge. There is nothing the body
suffers that the soul may not profit by. With
that I sail into the dark : it is my promise of
the immortal; teaches me to see immortality
for us. Diana in Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways.""
4 [49]

€|je JBonber of $ig <®tatiou0 Wotb0
Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipped in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die. Tennyson.

[50]

Ill
515les»eD are the meefe : for thes shall inherit
the earth
THE finer and more exquisite things of
life are enjoyed only by the simple-
hearted people who are poor in their own
esteem. The truest and most stable comfort of
life comes to those who have faced the worst
and yet believe in the best ; who are able to
cheer their fellows with the words Hopeful
said to Christian as they were passing
through the river that was very deep, whose
name was Death: "And entering, Chris
tian began to sink, and, crying out to his
good friend Hopeful, he said, 'I sink in
deep waters ; the billows go over my head ! '
Then said the other, ' Be of good cheer; my
brother ; I feel the bottom, and it is good.' "
These are the deep truths of experience
contained for us in the first two beatitudes.
The third beatitude is not so mystical.
It states a simple principle of business and
professional success. It is that in this
world the man succeeds who can forget
himself. Again the beatitude has the look
[5i]

€fje IBonber of i^i£ <£raciou£ iBorbg
of paradox about it. We have so frequently
heard the principle enunciated that self-
assertion is the password to material
success :
"If you'd seek in this world to advance,
And your merits you fain would enhance,
You must foot it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or you have n't the ghost of a chance."
But even the narrowest of shrewd busi
ness men know that this is a vulgar perver
sion of the truth. The best salesman is he
who is invisible himself because he makes
you look at the goods which he is trying
to sell. The best public speaker is the
man whom you forget altogether in his
subject. The best historian is the one
who brings you face to face with the past
so that you forget altogether the medium
through which you are looking. You for
get Walter Scott absolutely when you are
in the midst of one of his novels; you
never can forget Charles Reade for an in
stant when reading one of his. And Sir
Walter is the greater in his art, because
both art and artist are invisible.
It is not the meekness of Uriah Heep,
then, of which Christ speaks here — that of
the man who is continually embarrassing
you by lying down and begging you to wipe
[52] '

€he JEonber of %i0 <&zatiim0 tEorbg
your feet upon him. It is not the meek
ness of the mild and limp creature that
never knows its own mind, and, Polonius-
like, agrees with Hamlet in everything:
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that 's almost
in shape of a camel ?
Pol. 'Tis like a camel indeed.
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale ?
Pol. Very like a whale.
No, it is of that self-forgetfulness which
in social relations we call courtesy (and
Dekker, the old English poet, calls Christ
"The first true gentleman that ever
breathed ") ; it is of that self-forgetfulness
which in personal relations we call love, in
business relations we call "interest in his
work," and in intellectual and ideal pur
suits we call enthusiasm. It is of this great
quality of mind and heart that our Lord
speaks here.
Swagger and impudence are barriers in
the way of success. The world belongs to
the man who can forget himself. Physi
cally we begin to be efficient in any line
of action only when we are able to do much
of it almost unconsciously, whether it be
playing a piano or a game of tennis. So
cially our life begins to be a pleasure to
ourselves and others only when we lose our
[53]

€fje fEonber of tyi& 4Bractou£ Woxb0
awkward self-consciousness. Sydney Smith
said to a young man who consulted him for
a cure for his terrible self-consciousness
upon entering a room where other people
were, "The cure is this: Nobody is look
ing at you; nobody is thinking of you;
you are not of the slightest consequence;
make yourself at home."
Intellectually one gains permanent suc
cess only when one fights, not for personal
victory or fame, but for the truth, and for
the truth only, even if it turns out to be the
destruction of one's most cherished theories
— which have been the very child of one's
own brain and the continual pride of one's
thought-life for years. It is only the scien
tist and thinker who has altogether for
gotten himself in his search for truth,
who has attained any lasting reputation in
this world. But it is in the moral sphere
that this truth is so specially evident. This
meekness, this self-forgetfulness, is the
mark of the very greatest reformers and
statesmen in all times. They have been
men identified with eternal principles, and
have forgotten themselves in their great
causes. Many of them have been person
ally modest and timid almost to a fault, but
when their cause was attacked, they were
bold as lions. Enthusiasm for some great
cause and love of some great person, these
[54]

Ct>e 3©onber of iffcg <©raciou£ i©orbg
are the forces that produce this real meek
ness of spirit.
A British paper published the cartoon of
a prominent statesman who was trying to
arouse the country to some great national
issue and who had found it difficult to make
his people feel what he considered their
danger. In the cartoon he was seen in a
posture of great jubilation, crying, "At
last I have got them to call me names ! "
Personal hate and opprobrium were noth
ing to him if he could only get his people
to think of the great issue he brought be
fore them. A splendid instance of the
union of this personal meekness with in
flexible power of conviction is Luther's
appearance before the Diet of Worms.
Lindsay, in his "History of the Reforma
tion," paints the scene for us:
When artists portray the scene, either on
canvas or in bronze, Luther is invariably repre
sented standing upright, his shoulders squared,
and his head thrown back. That was not how
he stood before Charles and the Diet. He was
a monk, trained in the conventional habits of
monkish humility. He stood with a stoop of the
head and shoulders, with the knees slightly bent,
and without gestures. The only trace of bodily
emotion was betrayed by bending and straight
ening his knees. He addressed the emperor and
the Estates with all respect : "Most serene Lords
and Emperor, most illustrious Princes, most
[ 55 ]

Che tBonber of f$i0 45racioug 3©orb£
clement Lords " — and apologized for any lack
of etiquette on the ground that he was convent-
bred and knew nothing of the ways of courts.
Many a witness describes the charm of his cheer
ful, modest, but undaunted bearing. The Saxon
official account says: "Luther spoke simply,
quietly, modestly, yet not without Christian cour
age and fidelity — in such a way, too, that his
enemies would doubtless have preferred a more
abject spirit and speech." "When it came to my
turn to speak," Luther himself says, "I just
went on."
Perhaps the greatest historic fulfilment
of this principle of Christ's is to be seen in
the founding of the New World by the early
Pilgrims. That is the most concrete ex
ample of the meekness that has in truth
inherited the earth. "Setting rhetorical
exaggeration aside," says Goldwin Smith,
speaking of the landing of the Pilgrims from
the Mayflower, "we need not doubt that in
watching that sad yet hopeful procession
of men, women, and children, we are wit
nessing one of the great events and one of
the heroic scenes of history. . . . Their
compact throughout breathes good-will to
the land they had left, though the rulers of
that land had cast them out. The Puritan
exile did not say, 'Farewell, Babylon,'
but 'Farewell, dear England.'"
This meekness of spirit is the possession
of the man who is thoroughly interested in
[56]

cdc wanaet ot ipt? <^r:attou£ UDorbg
his work, who has identified himself abso
lutely with some great cause.
It is also the mark of the man who loves.
"A certain Brahmin," says the Indian
proverb, "went out in search of love, and
lost himself."
"Love suffereth long, and is kind; love
envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, is not
puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly,
seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked."
The meekness, the self-forgetfulness of
true love, which is the boldest and most
invincible thing the world knows of, is per
haps most wonderfully pictured for us in
that scene in Scott's "Heart of Mid-
Lothian," where Jeannie Deans pleads be
fore the queen for her sister's life: "But
when the hour of trouble comes to the mind
or to the body — and seldom may it visit
your Leddyship ! — and when the hour of
death comes, that comes to high and low
— lang and late may it be yours ! — O,
my Leddy, then it isna what we hae dune
for oursells, but what we hae dune for
others, that we think on maist pleasantly."
It is " Love ! And the world is yours ! "
in the words of the old song. Christ said
the same thing once again. We find it re
ported in the tenth chapter of Matthew at
the thirty-ninth verse : " He that loseth his
life for my sake shall find it."
I57J

€&e J^onber of 1$i0 dBraciou^ wtjtB0
"Who drives the horses of the sun
Shall lord it but a day;
Better the lowly deed were done
And kept the humble way.
"The rust will find the sword of fame,
The dust will hide the crown;
Ay, none shall nail so high his name
Time will not tear it down.
"The happiest heart that ever beat
Was in some quiet breast
That found life's common duties sweet,
And left to heaven the rest."

Yet it was well, and Thou hast said in season,
"As is the master shall the servant be"'
Let me not subtly slide into the treason,
Seeking an honor which they gave not thee;
Never at even, pillowed on a pleasure,
Sleep with the wings of aspiration furled ;
Hide the last mite of the forbidden treasure,
Keep for my joys a world within the world; —
Nay, but much rather let me, late returning,
Bruised of my brethren, wounded from within,
Stoop with sad countenance and blushes burning,
Bitter with weariness and sick with sin.
Then, as I weary me, and long and languish,
Nowise availing from that pain to part, —
Desperate tides of the whole great world's
anguish
Forced through the channels of a single
heart, — [58]

€f>c tteonber of $ig 45ractou£ iteorbg
Straight to thy presence get me, and reveal it,
Nothing ashamed of tears upon thy feet,
Show the sore wound and beg thine hand to
heal it,
Pour thee the bitter, pray thee for the sweet.
Then, with a ripple and a radiance thro' me,
Rise and be manifest, O Morning Star !
Flow on my soul, thou Spirit, and renew me,
Fill with thyself, and let the rest be far.
Frederic W. Myers.

59)

IV
HBlesseD are thep that hunger ana thirst after
righteousness : for the^ shall be ftlleD
WE might summarize the teaching of
the first three beatitudes, each in
a sentence, thus:
i. The foundation of the riches of the
human spirit is in the sense of its own
poverty. The self-complacent man is the
only hopeless, spiritual pauper. There was
hope for Peter because he went out and
wept bitterly at the thought of the abject
poverty of his own spirit which had so
denied his Master.
2. It is suffering nobly borne that en
dows man with the deepest capacity for
joy. Perhaps, of all the works of Tennyson,
the lines that will live the longest, after all
the rest have passed out of fashion, will be
those simple passionate words, yearning for
the fulfilment of this truth :
"O that 'twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!"
[60]

€he HB»onbcr of tyi0 oBracioug t@orb£
3. All things belong to the man who for
gets himself. And cursed above all is the
man who ever remembers himself, for his
own miserable self is his sole inheritance.
" I do not believe there was a single point in
Mr. Hexton's character," says Mark Ruth
erford, "in which he touched the univer
sal; not a single chink, however narrow,
through which his soul looked out of itself
upon the great world around."
But of the people who have ceased to
glory in their own pretensions and have in
all meekness taken upon themselves the
yoke of Christ, Paul has wondrous things to
say : " Therefore let no man glory in men.
For all things are yours; whether Paul or
Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or
death or things present or things to come;
all are yours ; and ye are Christ's and Christ
is God's." And now we may summarize this fourth
beatitude in the sentence, Every man may
be what he wants to be.
It is not a general principle of human life
that every man may have what he wants to
have. Some of us long for riches or skill or
position that we may never be able to gain.
Fiut it is a law of human life that every man
may be what he desires to be. He may gain
for himself any element of character which
he desires to make his own. If you really
[61 j

€fje iBonber of 1$i0 aBracioug Wozb0
desire to be strong of will, you can be. If
you desire to be kind-hearted, you can be.
There is no quality of character which you
admire in any of the world's heroes which
you cannot also possess, if you really desire
it. There is no heroism or courtesy or
grace or strength which is not yours for
the wanting. All the virtues of Christ are
yours if you want them sincerely enough.
We may not all have his skill, his wisdom,
his wonderful power and insight, but we
all can have his kindness of heart, his
thoughtfulness for others, his moral cour
age, his tenderness and sympathy. Physi
cally and intellectually the way of advance
for you may be barred at some point by the
laws of heredity or environment, but there
is no law in heaven or earth that can bar a
man's moral and spiritual advance along
the everlasting way of righteousness. It
simply depends upon the "wanting," upon
the will, whether you and I walk therein
or not.
If your hunger and thirst after righteous
ness is keen enough, then you shall be
filled; in the end you shall be what you
want to be.
The ways of God to man are justified
by this one fact, that it matters not how
many doors around a man are closed —
doors to advancement and fame and pros-
[62]

€fje iEonber of %i0 <J3raciou3 3&orb£
perity — there is always one door open,
namely, the door by passing through which
he may become a better man. The gate of
the way that leads to the mountain peaks
of character is always open for every one.
Our Lord is again here revealing to us a
fact of experience, a law of life. It is a
principle that he has emphasized elsewhere
— the principle that a man gets what he
asks for in life. "If you seriously want to
be good, your progress may be slow, but at
the last you will be good." " Ye are as holy
as ye truly wish to be holy." There is no
moral defect that cannot be eradicated.
The last beatitude told us how not to think
of ourselves, how to forget ourselves ; this
beatitude tells us how to think of our
selves, how to remember ourselves. It is
the beatitude of self-examination. What
are the things after which I do sincerely
hunger and thirst ? Over which of my de
sires do I linger most longingly when my
mind is free to wander at its own sweet
will? Is it altogether for "things" that I
long, or do I truly feel a deep dissatisfac
tion with my own moral attainments and a
deep desire after a better inner life ? The
greatest problem before us to-day as a race
is the problem of the education of human
desires. If we only wanted the right things,
we could always have them. How often it is
[63]

€he H&onber of $& <jBraciou£ tBorbg
said after a slight sporadic attack of reform
in the municipal affairs of a city, "The
fact is, the people of the city do not want a
clean government." The root evil of our
race is "the shameful poverty of human
desires." But the man whose life in this
world rings true as a bell is simply the man
who is blessed in this beatitude, for the
dominant mood of his inner life is best
described as being an insatiable hunger and
thirst after righteousness.
The glorious thing about this law of life
is that the hunger and thirst after the
lower things of life can never be satisfied,
but the hunger and thirst after righteous
ness shall be fully met. The lower desires of
humanity are so limited in their scope and
duration. The heart of the man who in
dulges them grows narrower and narrower,
till at last he dies stifled in its darkness
like a rat in a hole. It is good desires alone
that are infinite in the vistas they open up
before one, and eternal in their superiority
to the changes of material things. Spite,
selfishness, lust, anger, end of a sudden in
despair and horror. But all the virtues of
the beatitudes go on forever deepening
and broadening in the sunlight of eternal
day. The satisfaction of our noblest de
sires, that is heaven. And all the noble
souls of the world have so pictured it.
[ 64 ]

€xyt tteonbet of tyi0 aBracioug tEorbg
"Thou hast made us for thyself, and our
souls weary themselves till they find their
rest in thee," says the great Augustine.
"He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth
the hungry soul with goodness," says the
Psalmist. "All we have willed or hoped
or dreamed of good shall exist, not in its
semblance, but itself — when eternity af
firms the conception of an hour," says the
poet Browning.
And what shall be the nature of the
satisfaction of that great hunger and
thirst in the end ? Different ages have
drawn different pictures of it to suit the
thoughts and imagination of their own
times. To some placid, musical folk,
accustomed perhaps to the temple ritual,
it has been satisfyingly pictured in terms
of golden harps and a great chorus sur
rounding a golden throne of royalty. To
us, in this age, it is most fittingly pictured
in terms of activity and progress rather
than in those of perpetual contemplation
and adoration. The glory and reward of
virtue, as Tennyson says, is the joy of
"going on and still to be."
" She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats
of the just,
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a
summer sky:
Give her the wages of going on and not to die."
S ' [65]

€he IBonber of i$i0 <Braciou^ UBorbg
To continue to work forever with the
God and with the other friends whom we
have come to love in this world, this would
be our heaven.
"Nothing resting in its own completeness
Can have worth or beauty; but alone
Because it leads and tends to further sweetness,
Fuller, higher, deeper, than its own.
Life is only bright when it proceedeth
Towards a truer, deeper life above;
Human love is sweetest when it leadeth
To a more divine and perfect love."
It does not yet appear what we shall be:
that we can only dimly surmise. Our creation
as a race is still in process, its completion will
reveal to us the altogether undreamed-of possi
bilities of the human race. What that comple
tion will mean we can understand when we look
at Jesus, who is the embodiment of true human
ity, and then upon the chaotic and confused
condition of the human spirit in the life of the
world around us to-day. Johannes Muller.
All the holy nature, spirit, tempers, and in
clinations of Christ lie as a seed in the center
of thy soul. William Law.
Let no man think that sudden, in a minute,
All is accomplished and the work is done; —
Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst
begin it,
Scarce were it ended with thy setting sun.
F. W. Myers.
[66]

€&e iteonber of §i0 <&xatitm0 i©orb£
Are you in earnest ? Seize this very minute.
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;
Begin, and then the work will be completed. Goethe.
"This wrong hath ever been, this sin
Will last the world out," so men cry;
"Nature herself pleads a necessity."
But thou, trust thou the law within ;
By that supreme reality
Dare thou to give all history the lie.
Yea, by that uncreated Light,
Whereof this solid earth and sky
Are but the fitful shadows cast on high,
Rise up and cry, supreme in right,
"This wrong is dead and damned to-day,
Though through all ages it has held its sway !"
And broken though thine arm, thy spear
Naught but a bruised straw, yet smite
The ancient regent lie in all men's sight.
And though men flout at thee and jeer —
A gnat that buzzes up against a wall
Of rock in hope to beat it to its fall.
Though stronger grows the wrong each day,
And though beneath its iron feet
It pound thee small, and all thine ends defeat;
Yet shall the world confused, astray,
Grow polar to thee, slowly taught,
And crystal out a Cosmos round thy thought.
Ellice Hopkins.
[67]

JlBlesseD are the merciful: for theu shall
obtain mert^
SO far upon our way through the beati
tudes we have considered the laws of
detachment, of sorrow, of self-forgetful
ness, and of aspiration, which respectively
work themselves out in the life of the true
man or woman into idealism, comfort,
possession, and satisfaction.
We come now to the fifth of these great
principles of human life, which is the law
that mercy is the fruit of mercy. It might
be called the converse of the Golden
Rule; it might be stated, "Other people
will do to you as you do to them, or per
haps better." The world will treat you as
we\\ as you treat the world.
The first four beatitudes have described
the essential nature of the inner life of the
true soul in its own being and relation to
God. The last four beatitudes speak of
the nature of the life of the true soul in
relation to the outer world and the lives of
others. The first four show what the ideal
life is in itself; the last four show what it
[68]

€he IBonber of §i0 <&xatiou0 Wozbg
will mean to others. In itself it is a sense
of poverty — comforted, self-forgetful, and
aspiring; for the outside world it is a
force telling in the lives of others for
mercy, purity, fairness, and steadfastness.
Like so many others of the sayings of
Jesus, this beatitude is expressed in a
paradoxical form. It does not seem at
first sight as if life were so fair as this
beatitude represents. It seems as if the
merciful in actual life often received in
justice and railing and oppression instead
of a return of mercy. But below the sur
face appearance of falsehood there is a
deep truth in the fact that a man gets out
of life what he puts into it. That fact has
been borne out by the experience of Christ
throughout the ages. Our Lord himself
put into life the intensest and most indig
nant hatred of wrong and injustice, and at
the same time burning, eternal love for the
human spirit. And human life has re
turned to Christ in kind the most bitter
hatred of its evil heart, by which he was
mocked and scourged and crucified, and
at the same time the eternal devotion and
infinite love of its better self.
It is, then, another self-acting law of
life, that the merciful man receives mercy
from life. From God, in the comfort of
his own heart, he receives mercy; from the
[69]

€fte IBonber of tyig <&xatimi0 Woxb0
world of nature around, in mysterious cur
rents of sympathy, he receives mercy;
even from his fellow men, in the end, he
receives mercy.
In the very act of showing mercy a
blessing comes from God to the forgiver
himself.
"The quality of mercy is not strained;
It is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
TThe condition of God's mercy is that man
be merciful. No cry for pardon is heard
unless one of its petitions is that of the
Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our debts as
we forgive our debtors. . . . But if ye do
not forgive men their trespasses, neither
will your Father forgive your trespasses."
The servant in the parable of the eigh
teenth chapter of Matthew who would not
forgive as he had been forgiven was de
livered to the tormentors till he could pay
his debt. This is a truth emphasized all
through the teaching of Jesus.
At the last the test of our worthiness or
unworthiness for fellowship with God is
our mercifulness or thoughtlessness about
those who in the world around us were
hungry or thirsty or strangers or naked or
sick or in prison (Matt. 25: 40-46).
It is in the act of kindness to one's fel-
[70]

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lows that one earns the capacity of under
standing and receiving the kindness of
God. It is little acts of mercy rather than
long prayers that open up the road most
readily between the divine love and the
human soul. God, nature, and humanity
close their souls against the merciless
people like Jonah and Shylock. Jonah is
left in the burning sun, beside the withered
gourd, above the great city of Nineveh, in
a bad temper because people were so
much better than he thought, and the
heart of the Eternal was so wonderfully
kind. Shylock staggers out of the court to
his lonely home, and a life of everlasting
contempt. The world judges both men
mercilessly because both were merciless in
their treatment of the world. But al
though serious-minded students may spy
many defects in the characters of Charles
Lamb and Robert Louis Stevenson, to
name but two critics of the world's life,
yet, because both of them were so merciful
in their judgment of other men, both have
obtained from the world not only mercy
but love.
The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.
Wordsworth's Hart-Leap Well.
[71]

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Then gently scan your brither man,
Still gentler sister woman ;
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang,
To step aside is human :
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving Why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far, perhaps, they rue it.
Who made the heart, 't is He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each chord — its various tone,
Each spring — its various bias:
Then at the balance let 's be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What 's done we partly may compute,
But know not what 's resisted. Robert Burns.
Be merciful, for all men are fighting a hard
battle. Ian MacLaren.
Shall we make a new rule of life from to
night ? Always to try to be a little kinder than
is necessary. J. M. Barrie's Little White Bird.
When over the fair fame of friend or foe
The shadow of disgrace shall fall ; instead
Of words of blame, or proof of thus and so,
Let something good be said.
Forget not that no fellow-being yet
May fall so low but love may lift his head;
Even the cheek of shame with tears is wet
If something good be said.
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No generous heart may vainly turn aside
In ways of sympathy, no soul so dead
But may awaken strong and glorified,
If something good be said.
And so I charge ye, by the thorny crown,
And by the cross on which the Saviour bled,
And by your own souls' hope of fair renown,
Let something good be said !
James Whitcomb Riley.
And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I con
demn thee : go and sin no more. John 8: ii.
Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do. Luke 23: 34.

[73l

VI
HBlesseD are the pure in heart : for theg shall
see <Sotj
THE beatitudes are a description of
the Christian life. They do not so
much refer to different classes of people
as to the different aspects of the Christian
life. "Repent" was the cry of John the
Baptist to his people. "Repent" was the
solemn word taken up by Jesus at the
opening of his ministry. The question
must have been asked by inquirers, "To
what kind of a life is this repentance to
lead ? What is the nature of human life
as it ought to be?" Christ's answer to
these questions is in the beatitudes. This
is true human life. It is a life of seeking.
The first beatitude defines that. The
Christian is dissatisfied with things as they
are. He himself feels himself poor and
sorrowful and valueless and hungry and
thirsty. He seeks for another and a better
world, where sorrow shall be comforted —
a state which shall be established upon this
earth and shall surely satisfy his craving
for righteousness — where mercy and pu
rity shall rule, where God's very presence
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shall dwell, and all the inhabitants of which
shall be sons of God, which shall be both
the earth we know so well and the king
dom of heaven of which we dream. The
Christian life is the life spent in seeking
and working for this — God's new world.
The truth underlying this sixth beatitude
is this: You see what you are. Are you
a worker ? Then you see work all around,
piles of it stacked up everywhere you look,
waiting for you to get time enough to do it.
Are you a loafer ? Then the whole world
conspires to bring to your attention con
venient and comfortable places to sit
down. One man visits a city and reports
with disgust that the city is wholly given
to idolatry; another man visits the city
and sees in it an altar erected to the Un
known God. To one the whole world is
filled with selfish men, to another the same
world is filled with startling examples of
unselfish heroism. Each man sees in his
own life, in his fellow men and in the
world, the reflection of his own face. The
only way to see God in the world is to have
God in one's own heart. And God comes
into the life, not by thinking, nor by feeling
alone, but by being, by that straightfor
ward, simple uprightness of living which
Christ calls purity of heart.
But it will be objected, one cannot be so
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superficial or so insincere as to pretend
that one does not see the evil in the world.
There are evil and impure and bad things
in the world. It matters not how clean
one's own soul may be, if one has had any
experience of life, he has seen much that is
evil. To this the answer is that it all de
pends upon the way one looks at a thing,
what one sees in it. A slum section of a
great city appears to one man to be the
subject for much sentimental horror in
conversation with his friends, and pro
vides matter for prurient imaginative me-
anderings for his own mind. To another
man the same slum appears as the most
splendid site possible for one of the city's
much needed parks, and the material for
goading him to instant action for the good
of the people living there. Both men see
the evil. One sees in it the picture of his
own morbid mind, the other sees in it God
— the God of his own heart's dreams of a
better city and a wholesomer life for the
people. To the clean heart all evil appears as the
possibility for good, as the need of re
demption. To the Christian, "Earth's
crammed with heaven, and every common
bush afire with God." Blessed are the
pure in heart, for in the great and glorious
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things of the world they see God's spirit
living and victorious; and deep down
below the base and unworthy things of life
they see the same spirit of God slumber
ing, waiting to be called to life by the
touch of sympathy, by the kindling love of
a kindred, God-filled soul.

Spirit of purity and grace,
Our weakness pitying see :
O make our hearts thy dwelling-place
And worthier thee.
O Lord and Master of us all,
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own thy sway, we hear thy call,
We test our lives by thine.
Thou judgest us : thy purity
Doth all our lusts condemn;
The love that draws us nearer thee
Is hot with wrath to them.
Our thoughts lie open to thy sight;
And naked to thy glance,
Our secret sins are in the light
Of thy pure countenance.
Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
What may thy service be ?
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word,
But simply following thee.
John Greenleaf Whittier.
[77]

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Malik, son of Dinar, said, Jesus one day
walked with his apostles, and they passed by the
carcass of a dog. The apostles said, How foul is
the smell of this dog! But Jesus said, How
white are its teeth ! Mohammedan Saying.

[78]

VII
HBlesseD are the peacemakers : for the? shall
be talleD the children of <8oD
SOME one with beautiful fancy has
read the beatitudes as a consecutive
history of the spiritual experience of one
becoming a child of God. The words of
genius always seem to have a wider mean
ing than the thoughts that prompted them.
The words of our Lord touch humanity
at a point so deep and fundamental that
they are infinite in their applications to
human life. Probably we do not stray as
far as might seem from the original inten
tion of the words when we interpret them
thus as a spiritual history. In the first
beatitude the soul awakes to a sense of the
poverty of its own spirit. This sense of
sin, as it is called, is the beginning of the
new life. It is the first step to the king
dom of heaven. It is followed in the sec
ond beatitude by deep sorrow for sin, the
true mourning that shall be comforted in
the great experiences of repentance, faith,
and pardon. In these experiences we pass
on into the third beatitude, where self is
forgotten, where the soul struggles not for
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its own salvation but for the salvation of
the earth. Once that consciousness of
others, of " the earth " as the true posses
sion of the Christ, is reached, we find in the
fourth beatitude that the true life of Christ
in the heart has begun in an eternal hunger
and thirst after righteousness. The fruits
of that new life are, first, mercy, and, then,
purity and peace, and, lasdy, steadfastness
until the end.
It is Christ's history of a Christian soul.
Christ's answer to your question if you are
a true Christian or not is this, Do you
show the fruits ? And these are the fruits
which he places here as the cardinal prod
ucts of the new life: First, mercy, and
then purity, peace, and steadfastness.
Are our lives telling for these things in the
world ? If not, then we had better go back
to the first beatitude and try to learn for
ourselves the Christian Way.
The best definition of peace is this:
Peace is order brought out of chaos.
Peace is not submission, cessation of
struggle, denial of contradiction, com
promise, sleep, death. Peace is order.
Peace is life at its highest and utmost.
Peace is strength controlling and directing
to efficient service the infinite variety and
difference of competing forces. The " dull
weed that rots itself by Lethe's wharf" is
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in the vortex of decomposition and unrest.
The great Atlantic liner speeding swiftly
over the ocean, without a bolt jarring,
without the rattle of a loose bearing, or the
creak of an oilless axle, in all its engines,
swift as an arrow through storm and tem
pest to its predestined haven — this is the
symbol of peace.
In this seventh beatitude we have one of
Christ's deepest thoughts of God. In the
essence of his being God is a peacemaker.
The task he has taken upon himself is the
ordering of a whole universe. Out of
tempestuous, restless chaos he has brought
our universe with its regular orders and
sequences, its hierarchies of powers and
responsibilities, its infinitely beautiful ad
justments and harmonies. And out of
the undisciplined, chaotic parts of it he is
still engaged in bringing peace. Out of
the brute passions and fears of the human
heart he is bringing mercy and purity
and peace and steadfastness. He is still
working at this great task of atonement, of
peacemaking, of the bringing of man to
God. God is a peacemaker. "Blessed
are the peacemakers: for they shall be
called the children of God."
God's work of peacemaking is done
through his children. We are his instru
ments for bringing peace on earth, good
6 [81]

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will to men. It is our high privilege as
Christians to bring to our fellow men the
great gift of peace — peace with themselves,
peace with their fellows, peace with God.
The secret of peace with oneself is obe
dience — obedience to the will of God.
"In His will is our peace."
The secret of peace with our fellows is
the spirit of service. "But foolish and
ignorant questionings refuse, knowing that
they gender strifes. And the Lord's
servant must not strive, but be gentle
towards all, apt to teach, forbearing, in
meekness correcting them that oppose
themselves; if peradventure God may
give them repentance unto the knowledge
of the truth." (2 Timothy 2 : 23-25.)
The secret of peace with God is trust.
" In peace will I both lay me down and
sleep; for thou, Lord, alone makest me
dwell in safety." (Psalms 4 : 8.)
There is a subtle quality of soul that
qualifies one to belong to this highest order
of nobility, to the order of the Sons of God,
of the peacemakers. It might be called
sanctified tact or sympathetic imagina
tion. It is the power of seeing circum
stances from the other's point of view. In
its highest sense it is the power of seeing
things from God's point of view.
Our imagination is generally used in the
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service of self. He who uses his imagina
tion in the service of others belongs to this
nobler order of humanity. The peace
maker is the man who has a touch of the
divine power of bringing harmony out of
discord and order out of chaos. In his
own heart he finds the thunder and the
tempest of passion and of prejudice, but
his spiritual ear catches also that still
small voice of God within him, which he
knows is the voice of him who ought to be
true master of his life. And he sets to
work to make God's voice master in his
heart that his own life may be at peace.
He sees the anxious, restless lives of others,
but with sympathetic insight he divines,
far down below the troubled surface of the
sin, a depth of purity immovable. He
finds something to like in the men he wants
to save. His imagination pictures first to
himself and then to them what they might
become. They fall in love with his idea of
what they really are. They gradually
come up to his ideal of them. They come
to their better selves. And, lo, they find
themselves at peace with their fellows. He
moves among men as the real, true human
being, and in his presence men are every
where ashamed of not being as nobly
human as he. They rise above their petty
selfish feuds. By what he is, even more
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than by what he says, he is a peacemaker.
In the face of the mysteries of life that are
beyond human understanding, he trusts
the great Spirit of the universe, the great
Father of us all, with a trust filled and
illumined with the best light that deep
thought and true living can give, so that
his very presence in the house of mourning
bringeth peace, peace with God.
" A little bit of patience often makes the sun
shine come,
And a little bit of love makes a very happy
home;
A little bit of hope makes a rainy day look
And a little bit of charity makes glad a weary
way." " A little explained,
A little endured,
A little forgiven,
The quarrel is cured."
What were ye reasoning on the way? But
they held their peace : for they had disputed one
with another, on the way, who was the greatest.
And he sat down, and called the twelve ; and he
saith unto them, If any man would be first, he
shall be last of all, and servant of all. And he
took a child, and set him in the midst of them.
Mare 9: 33. See also Luke 9: 46-56.

[84]

VIII
Blessed are theg twhich are persecuted for
righteousness' safee: for theirs is the
bmgtjom of heabem
HBlessed are i?e, tohen men shall rebile pou,
and persecute pou, anti shall sap all man
ner of ebil against sou falsely, for mp safee.
ftefoice, and be erceeding glatj : for grtat ie
Eour retoard in tyabm : for so persecuted
thrg the prophets which fcoete before gou,
THERE is still one other way in which
we can look at the beatitudes. In
them Jesus has drawn back the curtain
from the secret of his own personal life for
a moment, and given us a touch of auto
biography, of the story of his own soul. It
is of the experiences of his own life that
Jesus speaks to us here. These are the
things he had found to be worth while in
life, that the years of his own life had proved
of greatest permanent value. He speaks
of qualities of soul which he himself pos
sessed. He speaks .as one who had proved
the truth of these affirmations in his own
life. In the beatitudes preeminently, then,
we are admitted into the sanctuary. Else-
[ 85 ]

€fje UDonbcr of tyi0 <0ractou0 f&otb£
where we read of Jesus' works and of the
outward events of his life ; here we have a
glimpse into his very soul. These, then,
are the things of which Jesus was sure; they
express his personal faith, his personal reli
gion. Each article in his creed has been
lived out in his life.
Jesus knew the blessing that comes to the
poor in spirit. "The Son of man," says
Jesus, "came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister." " I am among you as he that
serveth." There was no sorrow like unto his sor
row, yet Jesus knew also the comfort that
comes through sorrow, and for the joy that
was set before him endured the cross, de
spising the shame.
Jesus was meek and lowly of heart, yet
he knew also that if he were lifted up he
would draw all men unto him; and soon
the prophecy of this third beatitude will be
fulfilled, and he will possess the earth as
Lord of all.
"My meat," said Jesus, "is to do the will
of him that sent me," and the full satisfac
tion of this hunger and thirst of his life is
expressed in his last words upon the cross,
"It is finished."
Jesus was more than merciful towards
us. He gave his life a ransom for many,
and he has received from men ever since
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greater love than any other of the sons
of men. "We love him because he first
loved us."
Our Lord, who was alone of all men pure
of heart, saw, alone of all men, in all his
purity, the God whom we worship, and re
vealed him to us, so that Jesus is, for all
time, the one mediator between God and
men. And he is God's peacemaker. " God was
in Christ, reconciling the world unto him
self." In his great work of atonement he
is preeminently the fulfilment and ex
ample of the seventh beatitude, the first of
the sons of God.
So we come to this last beatitude, and all
the sad days before the crucifixion tell us
how truly this blessing that comes to the
persecuted and reviled and falsely accused,
was realized by him who knew no sin, and
yet endured such contradiction of sinners
against himself.
The essence of the true life and the fruits
of the true life, these have been the theme
of the preceding beatitudes. Here, in the
last one, we are forewarned as to the recep
tion of the true life by the world.
Several times Christ has thus in a series
of promises made the way of life seem most
desirable to his disciples, and several times
at the very last he has appended with a kind
[87]

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of quiet humor, as if it were on a par with
all the other good things promised, some
fearful experience as the present condition
for gaining all the rest. In this way the
words "with persecutions" are added to
the list of good things in Mark 10: 30.
And here also we have the same effect
produced. Who is there would not seek
this kingdom of heaven so attractively pic
tured in the preceding beatitudes ? Who
would not strive to gain all the blessednesses
promised therein ? But the last beatitude
makes us pause. We long to have these
beautiful graces of character; we long to
manifest these fruits of the Christian life,
and to become members of these high
orders of nobility. But the last condition
is a hard one. If we are to follow Christ, it
may mean loss and persecution and mis
understanding and false accusation. Our
Lord was always very frank about this. He
always warned those who would follow him
of the cost. And the days of martyrdom
have not yet passed. This last beatitude is
true for to-day as it was for those to whom
it was uttered. It costs to be a disciple of
Christ to-day, just as it did in those first
days. The reviling is not at the city gate so
much as in the municipal chamber or on the
political stump, but it is just as hard to
bear. The persecution is not so much at
[88]

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the stake or in the prison as in business and
professional life; the evil speaking is not so
much in the house of neighboring villagers
as in the city newspapers ; but it is equally
hard to rejoice and to be exceeding glad
under either experience in the twentieth
century as in the first.
Jesus opened the beatitudes with the
promise of the kingdom of heaven. In the
intervening beatitudes he has defined for
us that kingdom of heaven as consisting of
comfort, inheritance of the earth, satis
faction of one's highest longings, the ob
taining of mercy, the vision of God, and the
adoption into the family of God. Now, in
the last beatitude, Jesus returns to the full
promise of the first. As though with a re
frain, the theme closes as it opened with
the words, "for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." Indeed, these words might be
repeated like a refrain after each beati
tude, for all the others are but variations
and applications of their meaning.
Then, as if these comfortable people in
the sweet air upon the mountain-top could
not quite appreciate what this persecution
meant, or that this saying should ever
really apply to their case, quiet fisherfolk
in a country town, Jesus to their astonish
ment suddenly translates this beatitude
from the third person into the first and
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€i)e f©onber of f$i0 4r5ractou$ i©orbjS
second, as though he should say, "To you
the word is spoken." From this point on
right through the sermon, Christ keeps to
the second person as he illustrates and
drives home the truths of the great prin
ciples he had enunciated in their more
general form in the beatitudes. This
accounts for the dual form of this last
beatitude. On the one hand, it is a reminder to that
little company that they should not always
be upon the mountain-top. High sessions
of inspiration must be followed by hard
seasons of service. Then, also, this second
form of the beatitude marks the transi
tion from general principles to the appli
cation of the truths to particular cases.
The two forms bear the same meaning.
The word "falsely" in the second defines
the real heart of the meaning of " persecu
tion" in the first. "For righteousness'
sake " Jesus uses as the equivalent of
"For my sake." All who suffer for right
eousness' sake suffer for Jesus' sake,
whether they know it or not.
There has been much criticism of the
teaching of Jesus because of the prominence
in it of the idea of reward. We all feel
that to work for the reward one hopes to get
is a low conception of service. Yet all
through the teaching of Jesus this idea is
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€he iteonber of 1$i& <&xatxou0 t©orb£
emphasized and reiterated. "Great is
your reward in heaven"; "Your heavenly
Father shall reward you openly." Would
it not have been a nobler gospel if this idea
of reward had been excluded from it ? Is
not the highest conception of virtue the
virtue that is good because it loves to be
good, and not because it merely hopes for
some reward for its goodness ? These are
the questions that serious students of the
New Testament have sometimes asked
themselves. To these questionings it may be answered
that there is no evidence that Jesus meant
by these expressions to indicate that one
should be just and righteous for the sake of
a reward in the life to come. Rather is this
method of expression the only way that was
open to Jesus, through the language and
ideas of his time, to convey to his own
people the idea of causal relation, and of
God's personal interest working in and
through that relation. When our Lord
wished to express the idea, "Your acts
have eternal results, results of immense sig
nificance both to yourself and to God," the
natural way for him to bring this home to
the people of his time was in this way:
"Great is your reward in heaven"; "Your
heavenly Father shall reward you openly."
The idea of reward in Jesus' teaching is,
[ 9i 1 "

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then, simply the assertion of causal con
nection between present and future life.
A good life lived in God's universe pro
duces heaven ; a bad life produces hell. But
this heaven and hell are no superimposed
external glories or tortures ; they are simply
the lives which result by ordinary develop
ment from the lives of the present, under
the laws of the universe, as directed by
God. The reasons given as to why those
who are persecuted should rejoice and be
exceeding glad are two: first, they shall
have a foretaste of the fruit of their suffer
ing, of that which it will accomplish for
their fellow men; and second, they shall
be partakers in the great experience of
fellowship into which one is brought
through suffering for righteousness' sake.
Rejoice ! for this suffering is the guar
antee of real, eternal achievement. You
by your suffering are doing something to
bring nearer that new, regenerated human
society for which you long. Your reward
is an endless joy and pride in that work in
which you are being permitted to bear a
part. In the second place, you will re
joice because the very persecution to which
you are subjected is also the sign and
symbol that you have been admitted into
the great brotherhood of the world's true
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benefactors of whom the world is never
worthy. Rejoice ! for so persecuted they
the prophets which were before you. You
have been enrolled into the noblest fellow
ship of the human race, into the fellowship
of Christ's sufferings, into the band of those
who bear his cross.
"They met the tyrant's brandished steel,
The lion's gory mane;
They bowed their necks the death to feel, —
Who follows in their train ?
"They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain, —
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train ! "

[93 1

II. THOSE WHO BLESS OTHERS
Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have
lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? it is
thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out,
and to be trodden under foot of men.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set
on a hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it
under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it
giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they
may see your good works, and glorify your Father
which is in heaven. — Matt. 5 : 13-16.
THE SALT OF THE EARTH — THE LIGHT
OF THE WORLD
MANY ingenious theories have been
advanced as to the scheme of
thought in the Sermon on the Mount.
None of these satisfy a majority of read
ers. The truth is probably that there is
no consistent scheme of thought running
throughout the discourse. It is neither a
theologic statement of doctrine nor a har
moniously expounded constitution of a new
kingdom. It is far rather a familiar talk
upon life, spoken by the Master to his
followers. The question as to whether it
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was spoken all at once or at different
times is unessential to those of us who
read it for inspiration and help.
In all probability the audience was the
key to the line of thought. Our Lord spoke
to the people before him. He knew them;
he knew their needs, and he spoke to their
hearts. So the subject changes as he turns
from one section of his audience to another,
bringing to each the word of life. It is as
the son of the people that he teaches the
people, using as familiar illustrations the
words and phrases, the sights and scenes,
with which they were most familiar. The
first section of the sermon seems to have
been spoken to the men who had left all to
follow him; who were fired with the in
spiration of his gospel, and who were
grouped, we can imagine, in the center of
the company, a little band of enthusiasts,
with their earnest adoring eyes fixed upon
the Master. They were the men who had
come to understand a little of the meaning
of his message. To them he speaks words
calling them to active service for the world.
Many of them were fishermen. Theirs
was a hot climate. They knew what a
boon salt was to them in the preservation
of their fish. They were for the most part
villagers living in cottages of a single room.
Every evening of their lives since their
[ 95 ]

€he J^onber of tyig <jBracioug Wnxtx0
childhood, they had seen the one lamp
trimmed and set upon the projecting stone
in the cottage wall, its accustomed stand,
that it might give light to all the house.
Around them, as they sat upon the hillside
with Jesus, they could see, we may be sure,
some of "their own high-perched towns —
Gergesa, Gamala, Aphek, and Hippos,
that stood like beacons and caught the eye
from afar."
Jesus touches all these common sights
for them with a new and sacred significance.
Ye, my followers, who have had a glimpse of
these great truths of which we have been
speaking, are in the world as salt, as light,
as the city set upon a hill. My gospel is
going to reach the world through your lives.
Ye men can best preach it by becoming
something worth while yourselves, and then
going out into all the devious ways and
walks of life and being yourselves there.
The kingdom of heaven cometh not by
observation. Men whose lives are filled
with the spirit of the beatitudes permeate
the life of the world as salt does the food in
our homes, keeping it sweet and wholesome.
The influence of such men's lives comes
stealing softly into the world as light does
at dawn, unseen, almost unnoticed itself,
yet filling all things with light and color
and glory. [96]

Che tteonber of 1$i$ <tBxati*u0 Wozbg
To do this I send you forth into the world,
to sweeten and beautify by the tenor of
your own lives the life of the race. But as
there is no more useless and troublesome
thing than salt which has lost its power of
keeping food sweet, and still is capable of
destroying vegetation wherever it is thrown,
so there is no life more harmful and use
less than the life nominally Christian, that
is doing nothing to sweeten the life of the
world. All that can be done with the de
generate salt is to cast it out where it can
do least harm, to be trodden under the foot
of men. The only use of the apostate dis
ciple is that he must be spurned and cast
aside as a warning to others. That which
was meant to add zest to the feast table is
fit only to be cast out into the pathways of
men and trampled under foot. He who was
meant to be a savior of society has lost his
power of saving others, for he has lost his
own soul.
And as there is no light more useless than
that which is hidden under a bushel meas
ure, so there is no life of less use to the
world than his who is nominally a follower
of mine, but whose life is not lighting up by
its influence the dark places of the world,
and helping to dispel the clouds of igno
rance and lust and greed.
If the spirit of the beatitudes is in your
i ' [97]

Cfje tteonber of ^i0 <£rariou£ Wnxh0
lives, they will be a beacon of light to all the
world like a city set upon a hill. The city
did not climb the hill to be seen there, but
the world cannot help seeing the light of its
life because it is the loftiest in the land
scape. Let your light shine, not to illu
minate yourselves — you who bear the
light will be most invisible — but to light
up the way for others.
Rejoice if ye can do good anonymously,
so that men may see your good works and
thank — you ? No, he that works for
thanks is always disappointed. No; so
work that it does not matter whether your
part in the work is ever connected with
your name in the memory of men or not.
So work that men may find life happier,
may find their lot easier, may find the world
more joyful, and may glorify your Father
who is in heaven. Your reward will be in
the knowledge that your Father knows your
part in their happiness and is glad.
Macdonald, says Fitchett, draws this pic
ture of Florence Nightingale in Scutari:
"As her slender form glides quietly along
each corridor, every poor fellow's face
softens with gratitude at the sight of her.
When all the medical officers have retired
for the night, and silence and darkness
have settled down upon miles of prostrate
sick, she may be observed alone with a
[98]

Che iBonbet of $)i& <&xatinu0 t@orb£
little lamp in her hand, making her solitary
rounds." It is on this picture — the pity
ing woman carrying her nurse's lamp
through the long corridors where five thou
sand sick and wounded are lying — that
the imagination of Longfellow has fastened:
A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good
Heroic womanhood.
" They found the death-rate in the great
hospital at Scutari fifty-two per cent; they
brought it down to two per cent ! Florence
Nightingale remained in the Crimea till
the last British soldier had left its shores.
She stole back to England as silently as she
had left it. But the public gratitude found
her out, and broke upon her in a generous
tempest. A memorial fund of $250,000
was raised. She would not take a penny
of it, but devoted it to founding schools for
the training of nurses in the great London
hospitals. To-day, as the ship sails past
Balaclava, where once three great nations
met in battle, a gigantic cross shows clear
against the sky on the summit of one of
the hills. The cross bears the inscription
'Lord, have mercy upon us,' and was
erected by Florence Nightingale herself, as
the only memorial she wished of her labors."
[99]

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or
the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from
the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least
commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven : but
whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall
be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I say unto you, That except your righteous
ness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the
kingdom of heaven. — Matt. 5 : 17-20.

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL
ONE of the miraculous things about the
teaching of our Lord is that while it
was all spoken to fit the needs of special in
dividuals and particular cases, none of it is
of merely local or temporary interest. It all
touches the universal heart of humanity.
It suits all cases and fits all times. Jesus
has just spoken to these disciples of his,
fisherfolk and villagers, words that have
equal application to us all. Now it is to
these same men, as to men brought up in the
Jewish religion, that he speaks, and his
words are valid for all seekers after truth
in all ages of the world, it matters not what
their religious heritage has been.
Jesus here defines the true attitude of a
disciple of his to the past. His first words,
"Think not that I am come to destroy the
law and the prophets," imply that he felt
that his own position towards the inherited
religious creeds and symbols of his day
might be easily misunderstood. For us the
words, "The law and the prophets," stand,
as they did for his hearers, for the religious
faith and moral ideals which the world of
[103]

Che Wtmbtx of $i£ <JBraciou£ fBorbg
our day has inherited from the past. Jesus
speaks, then, in this passage to the same
enthusiastic, idealistic band of followers,
who were filled with adoration for the Mas
ter and joy in his new gospel, and in whom
the spirit of moral adventure was thrilling,
that they might bring the world to a saving
knowledge of his truth. He answers for
them the question, What is to be the atti
tude of a missionary of Christ to the older
faiths and moral ideals of the world ? This
is a vital question for us all, whether we are
by profession home or foreign mission
aries or not. Each generation has seemed
to set off afresh to preach a rediscovered
Christ to an unknowing and unsaved
world. What attitude shall we take to the
moral codes, to the religions and the
churches that seem to us to have become
merely formal, to have degenerated, to have
little of saving life in them ?
Jesus' answer is this: Do not seek to
pull them down, to cut them away, to argue
them out of existence. Nay, seek for what
ever good impulse there may be in them;
still keep them alive, and develop and fulfil
that. The other question of clearing away
the debris will take care of itself. I do not
come to destroy the truly religious and
moral structures of the past. Every such
an expression of the ideal longing of man-
[ 104]

<cne JPonoer of f$i0 <©ractou£ f©orb£
kind is an avenue and an approach to lead
up to the work that I do. The faces of all
the true moral and religious leaders of the
world have been looking toward me. There
is no need to pull down or cut away what
was temporary and imperfect in their work.
I come to fulfil that for which all the ear
lier leaders of our race worked and longed.
Their work is incorporated and tran
scended in mine. One has not to cut away
the bud when the flower appears. The
bud disappears into the flower; so does the
law into the gospel. The flower is a new
thing greater than the bud, fulfilling it and
taking its place.
Our attitude, then, to all the religious
wealth of the past is simply that of fulfil
ling and transcending. Not a single jot or
tittle of the sincere expression of the reli
gious and moral aspiration of mankind
shall pass away till its end is accomplished.
No religious ceremony or creed, no moral
restriction or law, shall pass away till it has
done its work. When it has done its work
it does not need to be pulled down or cut
away. It is as the starlights are at sun
rise, which do not need to be individually
extinguished, but whose lights become in
visible because they are merged in the larger
light of day. The Jewish laws of sacrifice
shall not pass away till their end is accom-
[ 105 ]

Che f&onbet of i$i0 <®ratioug wozup
plished and the Jewish people have grasped
the underlying truth of the vicarious nature
of human life. In the sacrifice of Calvary
the Jewish laws of sacrifice were not indi
vidually abrogated, but they were fulfilled
and merged in the fuller expression of the
idea of which they were partial embodi
ments. They were made unnecessary by
their own better expression.
There are some, of whom perhaps John
the Baptist was one, who break with the
past before its end is fulfilled because they
themselves have caught a glimpse of the
fuller vision. They are within the kingdom
of heaven, for they are noble souls, but, be
cause they did not wait for others and re
spect the weakness of their brethren, they
are the "least in the kingdom of heaven."
On the other hand, they who, like the
scribes and Pharisees, seek not for the ful
filment of the past, but try rather for their
own profit and pride to load all its meaning
less ordinances upon the backs of their chil
dren as a burden too heavy to bear — they
are outside of the kingdom altogether; they
have not yet begun to learn the way of
Jesus. He who is great in the kingdom of heaven
is he who can be loyal to the past till the end
of its last bequest has been fulfilled, till
every one of the lights of its stars has been
[ »6 ]

Che 3Bonber of 1$i0 <£raciou£ Woxb0
merged into the fuller light of day. Our re
ligion conquers, not by combating other
faiths, but by excelling them. If we have all
the good in them raised to a higher power,
then the future is ours. The gospel of
Jesus works, then, not by revolution or
by destruction or even by reform, but by
a new creation, by introducing into the
heart of the world's life an absolutely new
power which fulfils and transcends all that
the past has known. Or, to use the words
that Phillips Brooks used at a farewell
service to young missionaries in the year
1889: "What has the simpler, broader, and
more natural Christianity to say to the
missionary ? what to the heathen ? what to
the false and imperfect faiths ?
" What will it say to the missionary ? It
will say, 'Go, like your Master, not to
judge, but to redeem and save. Go, not
with threats of what will come without
your gospel, but with glowing promise of
what may come with it. Go, and make
men be, by teaching them that they are,
the sons of God. Go simply, naturally,
not carrying Christ across the sea, but
knowing well that you cannot find any
darkest spot on earth where he is not
already.' "What shall it say to the heathen ?
[107]

Che IBonber of $i0 4Bxatiou0 ffloxb0
'"Whom ye ignorantly worship, him de
clare I unto you." The life you are living
is not your true life. You are made for
the light. Behold the Light of life ! Let
him redeem you ! Lo, through the awful
cross he saved you, if you will be saved
from death.'
"What will it say to the false and imper
fect faiths ? 'I cannot hate you; I cannot
denounce you save as the evil of man has
mixed itself with your truth. I reverence
you ; I pity you ; I would interpret you to
yourself. It is my Christ that you are
feeling for. Come, let us seek for him
together.' "
O thou that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has center everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form.
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro' form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good;
O, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine !
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type. Tennyson.
[108]

Che fteonber of T$i0 4Bxatiou0 f©orbg
Old things need not be therefore true,
O brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah, still awhile old thoughts retain;
And yet consider it again !
The souls of now two thousand years
Have laid up here their toils and fears,
And all the earnings of their pain, —
Ah, yet consider it again ! Clough.

[109]

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL AS TO
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old
time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall
kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry
with his brother without a cause shall be in danger
of the judgment : and whosoever shall say to his
brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council :
but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in
danger of hell fire.
Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and
there rememberest that thy brother hath aught
against thee;
Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy
way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then
come and offer thy gift.
Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou
art in the way with him; lest at any time the ad
versary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge
deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into
prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means
come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost
farthing. — Matt. 5 : 21-26.
THE Sermon on the Mount is full of
vivid pictures of the life of the people
among whom the childhood and youth of
Jesus were spent. As we read, we seem to
[ »o ]

Che l^onber of ^i0 <Bxatxou0 Wozb0
see passing before us, as in a kind of pano
rama, scene after scene in the common
daily life of the people of Palestine. As
we look upon the pictures one after an
other, we see moving in among the peo
ple everywhere One who was a Galilean
peasant himself, in the garb of a village
carpenter. With shrewd, keen, yet kindly
eyes, he watches everything that passes,
in the home and in the market-place, in
country lane and city street. Nothing in
the life of man escapes his notice.
In verses 13-16 this Spectator of hu
man life is in the homes of his people.
Through his eyes we catch a glimpse of the
home life of village folk of his time. In
verses 17-20 we are at church with his
people, trying to worship in his spirit of
devotion, and yet seeing clearly through
the pious observances of the clerics of his
day. From the 21st verse of the fifth chap
ter right on to the 18th of the sixth chapter,
we go with our Lord into the streets of the
towns and villages of his native land.
Through his eyes we see many a little
drama of human life that is being enacted
upon them. Think of it, through the eyes
of Jesus we are looking upon the people of
his time, as they throng the streets of a
first-century town !
We see the beginnings and the end of a
[m]

Che D&onber of f$i0 dBracioug 3Botb£
village street brawl. Two men who have
something against each other meet upon ¦
the street. As they talk they grow angry
one with another. Soon they lose their
tempers, and we hear the words they are
hurling at one another, words whose mean
ing we cannot at this day even understand,
but which were certainly part of the vitu
perative slang of the day — Raca and
Moreh — knave and fool, perhaps. We
hear the two men thus losing their self-
respect, and degrading their characters
before the quickly gathering crowd. We
are present at the subsequent lawsuit, and
see one of the adversaries passing through
the hands of judge and officer into prison.
There Jesus says he will have to look out
for himself and pay the uttermost farthing.
But the implication is that the whole
trouble might have been prevented by a
little more self-control at the beginning of
things. The streets of that ancient town are
stained not only by anger but by lust.
There is the usual band of idlers at the
corners of the streets, and down those
streets look sensual, lascivious eyes that
betray the obscene imagination within.
Again, we are in the market-place amid
the buying and the selling. In the midst
of all the din we hear the complicated,
[»2]

Che iSonber of p£ oBracioug Wozbg
involved, and blasphemous language that
seems to be the medium of barter. This
buyer is swearing "by heaven" and "by
the earth" that he would not buy the goods
at half the price. This seller is swearing
"by Jerusalem" and "upon his head"
that he cannot afford to sell the goods for
a penny less. And One is passing by who
feels that* the whple* transaction would be
much more effective if Yes meant Yes and
No meant No.
The Roman officer compelling the men
whom he meets upon the village streets to
accompany hjm and carry his baggage for
a mile; the friends meeting and saluting
each other, taking pains at the same time
pointedly to ignore the presence of others
whom they do not care to recognize;
the rich man, marching ostentatiously as
though to trumpet sounds to give his alms ;
the religious devotee with his long robes
standing, presumably praying, at the cor
ner of the street, or issuing forth from his
house with face artificially painted to a
ghastly pallor that men may know of the
rigor of his religious discipline and fasting
— such are some of the vignettes of the
town and village life in Palestine as seen
between the lines of the Sermon on the
Mount. In this particular passage our Lord pro-
8 [n3]

C&e 3©onber of p£ ^carious U0orbg
ceeds to give some specific illustrations of
what he means by the words "fulfil" and
"accomplished" which he has just used.
He gives five illustrations of what he means
by the fulfilment or accomplishment of the
end of the old teaching through his new
gospel. Jesus uses these as examples of
the way in which all the other laws may
be treated.
The first illustration of the teaching
of the past which Jesus takes is the sixth
commandment, which his audience "have
heard" read Sabbath by Sabbath in the
synagogue. This does not need " pulling
down," but fulfilling. The law simply at
tempted to restrain the evil by punishing its
infraction. Its end is now fulfilled by carry
ing the prohibition back to the source of
the evil in the heart. Our Lord would
have us bear in mind whither this incipi
ent ill-nature that rises in the heart against
another may lead us. It begins insignifi
cantly enough in angry feelings, in such
petty, spiteful phrases as Raca and Moreh;
but these are the dangerous beginnings,
which, when they have matured, have
led men oftentimes to the judgment and
the council. Yes, such seeming trifles
have marked the beginning of the down
fall which has made many a criminal
whose body is cast as carrion outside the
[114]

Che t&onbet of $i$ <Bxaaov0 Wozb0
walls of the city in the vale of Hinnom.
The harboring of uncharitable feelings,
the use of spiteful epithets towards others
— these things are not as insignificant as
they seem. He who indulges in such
things is in danger, not only of ultimately
finding himself before judgment and coun
cil, but even of committing a breach of the
sixth commandment itself. On a sudden
the ill-nature, thus cherished in his heart
for years, may find a swift outlet for its
pent-up hatred, and, before he knows it,
he may be a murderer. The sin of murder
must be stopped, then, in its earliest phase,
while it is still at the more insignificant
stage of anger or spite or jealousy. No
man ever sets out in life to be a murderer;
but he who harbors such feelings in his
heart is in danger of becoming one before
he knows it. He is a murderer in his
heart, whether he ever gets the favorable
opportunity of expressing his hatred or
not. It is a matter of prime importance
not to let a strained relation exist between
you and another for a moment longer than
necessary. If, when in church, it suddenly
flashes upon you that such a matter in
your personal life is wrong, do not wait
to finish the service, but rise at once,
"leave there thy gift before the altar, and
go thy way; first be reconciled to thy
[115]

Che IBonber of tyi& <2E>ractou0 3Borb£
brother, and then come and offer thy
gift." One of the best commentaries on
this whole passage is Tolstoy's fable
called, "If You Neglect the Little Fire
You Can't Put out the Big One." It tells
of two neighbors who allowed the matter
of one egg, which had been lost, to kindle
ill-feeling enough between them to burn
down their whole village.

II
THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL AS TO
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old
time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery
with her already in his heart.
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out,
and cast it from thee : for it is profitable for thee
that one of thy members should perish, and not that
thy whole body should be cast into hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and
cast it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that
one of thy members should perish, and not that
thy whole body should be cast into hell.
It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his
wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement :
But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put
away his wife, saving for the cause of fornica
tion, causeth her to commit adultery : and who
soever shall marry her that is divorced committeth
adultery. — Matt. 5 : 27-32.
IN the second place, Jesus illustrates the
meaning of the fulfilment of the old law
by the case of the seventh commandment.
Here, again, it is necessary to go back of the
deed to the heart. He who eyeth a woman
in order to excite his lust is guilty of the
["7]

Che IBonber of ^i0 <tB>rattou£ Wozit0
sin of adultery. It is not merely that by
his indulgence in sensual thought he is so
weakening his will as to be liable to com
mit the overt deed under strong and sud
den temptation, but it is a fact that he is
already defiled and guilty in heart. In
view of the great difficulty of sexual purity,
our Lord lays down the principle that any
sacrifice is not too costly to attain it. The
eye and the hand are used as symbols of
the world of sense. Through the medium
of sight and touch and the other senses,
the charm and beauty and interest of the
world are poured into our hearts. Of
course the literal mutilation of the body
would not help matters, for, as Jesus has
pointed out, the trouble is in the heart.
But the voluntary limitation of one's
liberty, and the voluntary closing out of
one's life of certain sides of human experi
ence — this does help, and in fact this fleeing
from the foe is often the only way of escape
in periods of temptation. Henry Drum-
mond gave the best expression of Christ's
thought on this passage when he used the
term "moral invalids." And when he
went on to explain that a man who has a
tendency to rheumatism or to bronchitis
will not do certain things that a man in
normal health will feel himself quite justi
fied in doing; he will not, for instance, go
[118]

rcne uponoet ot jptjs <araaoug IBorbg
out so freely after nightfall without extra
wraps, or feel so free to lie out upon the
grass on a chilly day. So there are some
quite innocent and wholesome sides of
human life that we moral invalids ought
for our own good to cut off and cast from
us, certain books of good literature that
we should not read, certain sides of life
about which we should be content to be
ignorant, certain fine pieces of art that we
should not go to see. There are certain
times when it would pay us better to pluck
out our eyes and cast them from us than to
continue to look at that which betrays us
to our baser self. Christ came to give men
life and joy, but he saw very clearly that
discipline and limitation are necessary to
any true life or any lasting joy. Every
true man knows of certain absolutely in
nocent sides of life which for him are sin,
and which he knows he ought to close out
of his life for the time being altogether.
One man knows he ought not to go into a
bookstore and enjoy the luxury of hand
ling the new books, for it is better for him
to let his wife have money enough for the
home expenses rather than to have all the
newest books in his study and the sense of
meanness in his heart. Another man ought
not to eat certain kinds of food which are
perfectly digestible for the majority of
[»9l

Che J^onber of ^ig «Braciou£ 3@orb$
men but which unfit him for his work;
another man ought not to dance, or read
many romantic novels. Richard Cecil,
when a student at Oxford, cut the strings
of his violin, and never replaced them, lest
it should divert him from his studies.
Each man has to discover for himself the
particular eye or hand of his nature which
he ought to cast away from him. For it is
better to be kind and pure than to be
widely experienced and deeply learned.
All Christian asceticism, then, is to the
end of a fuller and more natural human
life. It is a sacrifice many times of the
good for the sake of the best.
Subordinated to this prohibition of adul
terous thoughts, is the matter of divorce.
There were divorce laws in the time of
Jesus, the gist of which is summed up by
Jesus in the words: "Whosoever shall put
away his wife, let him give her a writing of
divorcement." Our Lord, in this connection, reasserts
his principle that these ancient laws are
not ends in themselves, but means to a
further end. None of them are ultimate;
they need fulfilling. Divorce had probably
come in the time of Jesus to be morally
satisfactory in the eyes of society if ob
tained in legal form. People had come to
think that divorce was one of the perma-
[ 120]

Che iteonber of $ig <£racioug tteorbjS
nent and necessary institutions of society,
and that the laws of divorce were sanc
tioned by God as founded upon the divine
constitution of human nature.
Jesus, on the contrary, shows that the old
laws of divorce were merely means to an
end. They were attempts to limit savage
lust, and to create and safeguard the in
stitution of the human family. A great
step upward for the human race was made
when it was decreed that a man could not
simply discard his wife when the whim
seized him and choose another. He must
regard his marriage in the natural course
of events as for life, and if he were com
pelled to change, he must respect the
rights of his wife and of the community,
by getting the papers of separation drawn
up in legal form. So the laws of divorce
were a step upward from unbridled ani
malistic passion towards the establish
ment of the institution of the human
family. But the laws of divorce which
limited indiscriminate mating are only
fulfilled in the laws of the human family,
in which two souls are loyal to each other
for life. Jesus has just shown us that the
ideal toward which the laws of murder
point is the law of friendly loyalty and
love. Here he shows us that the ideal
toward which the laws of divorce point is
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Che Wtmbtz of 1$i0 <8racioug Wozb0
the law of family loyalty and love. It is
not enough simply not to have committed
murder, one must not harbor uncharitable
thoughts ; it is not enough simply to obtain
a divorce in legal form, one ought to be
loyal for life to the man or woman of one's
choice, " for better for worse, for richer for
poorer, in sickness and in health, to love
and to cherish, till death us do part."
The principle of Jesus, then, is that a
legal divorce does not change in any way
the sin of disloyalty towards one to whom
one has plighted one's troth.
Whether Jesus made the one exception
of adultery is doubtful. It probably can
never be proved so as to satisfy everybody.
But whether he made this exception or
not, it must be remembered that Jesus is
not laying down a new law; he is rather
pointing out the ideal in which the spirit
of the old law would be fulfilled, an ideal
of life-long marital loyalty. His simple
position is that unfaithfulness to one's
marriage vows is adultery, and that no
legal form can make it otherwise.
The further question as to whether this
disloyalty to one's marriage vows is ever
a lesser evil than others that life may
bring, which ought to be preferred before
them, is one that Jesus does not touch.
With his unerring wisdom he saw that to
[ "2]

Che fteonber of ]$i$ <©racioug Waxttg
do so would be to assume the role of a
casuist, of a lawgiver rather than of an in-
spirer of a new life. Each generation, he
saw, must feel its way towards the great
ideal for itself, must formulate for itself
its own divorce laws under the guidance
of God's spirit. But it must never come
to look upon divorce as a permanent form
of human social adjustment. It must ever
remember that it is only good in so far as
it acts as a limitation upon worse evils,
that it is only suffered because of the
"hardness" of men's hearts. This prin
ciple of Jesus is the last word that can be
said upon divorce laws — that the end of
them all must be to strengthen and purify
the foundations of the Christian home.

[ 123]

Ill
THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL AS TO
OATHS
Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by
them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself,
but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths :
But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither
by heaven ; for it is God s throne :
Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool : neither
by "Jerusalem ; for it is the city of the great King.
Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because
thou canst not make one hair white or Hack.
But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay,
nay : for whatsoever is more than these cometh of
evil. — Matt. 5 : 33-37.
OUR Lord now gives another series of
illustrations of the meaning of the
"fulfilment" of the old law. "Again ye
have heard that it hath been said by them
of old time." The last series of illustra
tions was derived from the decalogue; this
is based upon other laws of the Old Testa
ment. The old law forbade men to for
swear themselves, and commanded them to
perform unto the Lord their oaths. In ex
actly the same spirit as with regard to the
laws of divorce, the legalists had assumed
[124]

Che iBonber of $10 <$ractou£ Woztig
that this law implied that oaths were
necessary and permanent elements of hu-
/nari conversation and intercourse. They
had bent all their intellectual powers to
the problems of the interpretation of oaths
and of estimating and differentiating the
binding character of their varying forms.
Jesus again goes back of the law to the
end for which it was formulated. Again
he indicates how that end can be fulfilled.
This law was made for the purpose of
leading men to make their conversation
sincerely the expression of their thought.
Our Lord feels that in his day that end
might be more simply fulfilled by the
omission altogether of oaths from conver
sation. He repeats some of the oaths his
hearers were accustomed to hear every
day in the market-place, and shows by a
word how meaningless and irreverent some
are, and how ridiculous others are. Why
swear by one's head when you cannot
even control the color of the hair that
grows upon it ?
Jesus pleads for simple sincerity in con
versation, a sincerity that wins its own
authority in the long run. When a man's
Yes is known by long experience to mean
Yes, and his No to mean No, then his
simple word is of more weight than the
piled-up oaths of one whom men do not
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Cfje t©onber of 1^x0 4Braciou£ i©orbg
trust. If more than your mere No is
needed, it cometh of evil — either evil in
your own reputation, or evil in the stand
ard of the conversational life in which you
live. Even the oaths that are required of
us all in law courts " come of evil " — of
the evil heart of so many men who need
to be specially frightened or awed before
they can be depended upon to tell the
truth. Such oaths are a temporary ex
pedient in evil times, and must be tolerated
only as long as they fulfil Christ's principle
here laid down, and help to make some
men's Yes mean Yes and their No mean
No. "I know," he means to say, "that in cer
tain circumstances something beyond Yea
and Nay will be required of you; but it
comes of evil, the evil of untruthfulness.
See that the evil be not in you." Chrysos-
tom asks, " How evil, if it be [tolerated in]
God's law ? " and answers : " Because the
law was good in its season. God acted like
a nurse who gives the breast to an infant,
and afterwards laughs at it when it wants
it after weaning."

[126]

IV
THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL AS TO
REVENGE
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye
for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth :
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil:
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and
take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile,
go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that
would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
THE spirit which lay behind the an
cient laws of divorce will be fulfilled
in that society where men and women
everywhere are faithful to their chosen
partners for life. The intent of the an
cient laws of murder will find its fulfil
ment in that society where men love one
another sincerely in their hearts. The
laws as to the keeping of oaths are but
ancient sign-posts on the road that leads
to absolute simplicity and integrity of con
versation. So, too, the ancient laws of
justice will be fulfilled in that society
where evil can be simply ignored.
[127]

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The whole spirit of these sayings of our
Lord is lost if one supposes them to be
new laws in the place of the old. They
are not new laws that can be thoughtlessly
followed. Jesus has made plain that he is
pointing out the ideal that lies in the old
laws — an ideal which ought to be made
the conscious aim of the new Christian
society. He has specially safeguarded
his meaning by prefacing this antithetical
list of ancient laws and modern ideals
with the statement that the old laws can
not pass away till their use is fulfilled, till
they be "accomplished." The old laws
against murder, or the laws defining and
limiting divorce, or concerning legal oaths
and the punishing of evil-doers cannot,
according to Jesus' words, pass away till
they be accomplished — till men are ready
for the higher ideals, of which they are im
perfect expressions. They must last, on
account of the hardness of man's heart,
till their end has been attained. The
point which Jesus emphasizes is that
many things which the people of his time
had come to think were sanctioned by
God in these laws, as necessary and perma
nent forms of human society, were really
only temporary sign-posts on a road that
stretches far past them. The ideal society,
Jesus would teach his people, is not a
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Che J^onber of tyx0 <®xatwu0 tteorbg
society where all divorces are obtained in
legal form, where no one commits murder
or forswears himself, and where strict
justice is done to every one. The ideal
society is a society where all married
people are faithful to each other for life,
where men's hearts are filled with kind
liest thoughts and feelings for each other,
where their conversation is simple and
sincere, and where evil and injustice are
met and quenched by unexpected thought-
fulness and patience and kindness.
The irony of history has brought it
about that Christ's words have been
treated as if they were new laws in the
place of the old. It has been solemnly
discussed if our Lord here means to teach
that we must, for instance, give the matches
to the baby when he asks for them to eat,
or give money to the drunkard to aid him
in completing his debauch. Jesus said,
rather : I am come to fulfil this law of strict
arithmetical justice and bring it to its full
fruition in the law of infinite patience and
kindness. His work to that end is still
going on in the world. How can we help
in this work ? How can we help to bring
into being the society where evil shall be
ignored, and where it will be wholly
quenched by personal kindness ?
Jesus' words give us two answers to this
9 [ 129 ]

Che fBonbcr of i$x0 <*E>raciou£ fteorbg
question : First, by helping to bring about
the "accomplishment" of the end of the
old law of justice. The condition of the
applicability of the new ideal is the fulfil
ment of the end of the old law. It would
be foolish to attempt to teach the lessons of
freedom to those who have not even
learned the lessons of obedience. It would
be foolish to expect us to love one another
when we have not even learned to be just
to one another. Let us then strive to bring
into operation in human society, first of
all, the lower law of justice — "an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth " — and
then we can seek for the "accomplishment"
of that old law in the higher principles of
non-resistance to evil. It is the mistake
of so much modern philanthropy that it
tries to be kind before it has become just.
The downtrodden of the world to-day cry,
not for kindness and charity, but for justice.
To pretend to introduce in a wholesale
manner the higher principle of non-resist
ance of evil into modern commercial and
national life to-day would only result in a
greater neglect of the lower law of justice,
whose end is not yet accomplished.
But while this higher principle of non-
resistance of evil cannot be introduced in
any external wholesale manner into human
society, yet it can permeate the lives of
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Che H&onber of §x0 <£ractou0 t©orb£
individuals in such a way as to begin to
leaven the whole lump. It is our duty as
Christians not to obey in some merely
verbal manner these illustrative commands
of Jesus, but to strive to fulfil in our own
personal lives this law of justice and to
carry it on into the higher law of kindness.
One of the most striking individual at
tempts thus to bring justice to its full
fruition in kindness is to be seen in the
work of Judge Lindsey, of Denver, in his
treatment of young criminals. Indeed,
the modern attitude of the public mind
towards the problem of the treatment of
criminals has in the last few years changed
from the thought of revenge for the wrong
done to society to the kindliest interest in
the uplifting and reclamation of the trans
gressors themselves.
We can paraphrase, then, the meaning
of this section for ourselves in the follow
ing manner: When people possess not
merely the abstract spirit of even justice,
but also the spirit of the beatitudes in their
lives, then it will be natural for them in
meeting rudeness and insult in the world
to forget their own pride; in suffering in
justice to forget their own loss; when im
posed upon and oppressed, to forget their
own weariness ; in face of need to forget
their own need, because their hearts are
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Che Jteonber of i$x0 <&xatw\x0 t©orb£
always filled with the thought of how they
can help the other man whose life is thus
brought near to their own.
The godson went on his way. He walks and
thinks, "How can I undo evil in the world ?" Is
evil destroyed in the world by sending men into
banishment, by putting them in prison, by ex
ecuting them ? How can I go to work to destroy
evil, to say nothing of taking on me the sins of
others ? "
The godson thought, and thought, and could
not think it out. He went on and on; he came
to a field. In the field the grain had come up
well and thickly, and it was harvest-time. The
godson saw that a little heifer had strayed into
this grain, and the men had mounted their horses,
and were hunting it through the grain, from one
side to the other. As soon as the little heifer
tried to escape from the grain, some one would
ride up, and it would be frightened back into
the grain again. Again they galloped after it
through the grain. On one side stood a woman
weeping. "They are chasing my little heifer !" she said.
And the godson began to ask the peasants:
"Why do you do so ? All of you ride out of the
grain ! Let the mistress herself call the heifer."
The men obeyed. The woman went to the
edge, began to call, "Cusha, cusha."
The little heifer pricked up her ears and lis
tened. She ran to her mistress, thrust her nose
under her skirt, and almost knocked her off her
feet. And the peasants were glad, and the woman
was glad, and the little heifer was glad. Tolstoy.
[132]

Che t@onbet of 1^x0 ®zatxaix0 Wozb0
No man could fulfil a moral calling in the world
at all — still less could the moral calling of socie
ties be fulfilled — if the person and property of
human beings were to be at the mercy of the un
scrupulous, the violent, and the ineffective. It
is not honoring Jesus to read his words so. Just
as little would it be honoring Jesus to set his
words aside as if they could have no meaning for
us at all. The words are still original, exacting,
clear. They are a defiant way of asserting that
even when he is wronged the Christian is under
the law of love. He is never under any other
law. This is the impression which the vehe
mence of Jesus leaves, and is designed to leave,
upon our minds; but it is pure unintelligence
to read his paradoxical words as if they were a
statute for love. Love must be a law to itself.
James Denney.
The more inward is its application, the more
exacting it is. The more it is taken as the pres
sure of Christ's soul upon the soul and con
science of his Church, the more pregnant will
be its effects. Now, on this view, the literal in
terpretation of the Sermon is not severe enough.
A saying is never so hard in the letter as it is in
the spirit. James Moffat.

[133]

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL AS TO
ENEMIES
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou
shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
and pray for them which despitefully use you, and
persecute you ;
That ye may be the children of your Father
which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what re
ward have ye ? do not even the publicans the
same ?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye
more than others ? do not even the publicans so ?
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
which is in heaven is perfect. — Matt. 5 : 43-48.
THE noblest point in moral heroism is
reached when one can not merely
ignore the evil, but seek and find something
to like in the character of the oppressor.
The spirit of so much of the Old Testa
ment as requires the true Israelite to love
his own people and hate all other peoples
is only the partial dawn of the day that
leads men out of the darkness of individual
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Che HBonber of 1$i0 <©ratioug H&orbg
selfishness, through the spirit of national
patriotism, and into the bright day of uni
versal human brotherhood.
We must strive to be like our Father,
God, to be complete and comprehensive
in our love. God likes all his children, even
the naughty ones. His sun and his rain
are tokens of the loving care he has for all
alike. The mere barter of affections among
those equally fortunate is not the deepest
love. Even the very tax-gatherers and the
ordinary people of low ideals know this
passion. True love is overflowing like the
love of God, it finds something to love in
everybody; it dismisses none as hopeless
and unlovable, it has hope for all and
love for all.
Thus this whole series of illustrations of
the spirit of the fulfilment of the bid law is
summed up in the plea for human brother
hood, for a love that is complete like God's,
and not partial like that of common un
enlightened folk. To be perfect in our
love means that while we find all to love
in some, we should be able to find some
thing to love in all.
Who is the Christian ?
He who dwells in the world as a son in his
Father's house, sharing with his brothers the
good things it contains; [ 135 ]

Che iteonber of $i0 aBsractoug Woxit0
He who is free because he makes the Father's
will, and all the laws that spring from it, his own ;
He who finds everywhere that chance to love
which is the best thing any station can afford,
and welcomes the suffering which puts it to the
test; He who instinctively takes the point of view of
the man with whom he deals, and finds social ser
vice as absorbing as his personal affairs;
He who prefers the sweet peace of obscurity,
yet lets his example shine as far and wide as
God's glory and man's good require;
He who., recognizing his own elemental tenden
cies in others' failings, is ever ready to forgive;
He who sees that doing wrong is a worse evil
than the injury it inflicts, and would cut off his
right hand rather than cause another needless
pain, or loss, or degradation;
He who is so intent on doing good that he never
doubts that all needed goods will come to him in
return ;
He who needs no oath to support his integrity,
and whose kindness knows no bounds;
He who speaks his inmost thought, and acts out
his noblest impulses —
He who does these things ? No.
He who, finding them beyond his strength,
confesses as Lord and Master the Christ who did
and taught them; and cultivates the Spirit by
whose aid these and a thousand kindred graces
may be progressively attained. William De Witt Hyde.

[136]

UNOSTENTATIOUS PIETY

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men,
to be seen of them : otherwise ye have no reward
of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not
sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do
in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may
have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They
have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand
know what thy right hand doeth :
That thine alms may be in secret: and thy
Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward
thee openly. — Matt. 6 : 1-4.

UNOSTENTATIOUS PIETY
I
ALMSGIVING
ONCE this beautiful summation of the
life of our Lord was given, " He went
about doing good." In this passage Jesus
gives us one of his secrets of the art of
doing good in the world. Some people do
charitable deeds to get the praise and credit
for them from their fellow men. They
want a label attached to every good deed
they send out into the world, with their
own name written upon it. They pause
for a moment before throwing a rope to
a drowning man, to shout out their own
name to a passing reporter, that there may
be no mistake in the evening papers as to
their own part in the heroic deed. They
carve their own name over all the doors of
the church they have built, that future
generations may remember to whose glory
it was erected. They never give a dollar
away without exacting its full value in ap
preciation of their kindness from the world
at large. Or, to use the almost humorous
[139]

Che fBonber of f$x0 <©raciou0 H&orbg
description given by our Lord himself in
this passage, before venturing out to be
stow their blessing upon a poor widow,
they ensure a crowd to see them doing it,
by having a man with a trumpet collect
the crowd and start the procession.
Other people do good deeds in the world
for the sake of the good feelings which they
enjoy in doing them. Their left hand de
rives the most comforting solace and self-
congratulation from the contemplation of
the good deeds of their right hand. They
feel more comfortable at their own fire
sides in the evening, when they remember
the quarter they gave that day to the poor
little barefoot boy whom they met begging
upon the street and who had just run away
from home to spite his mother for making
him bring in the wood from the shed.
They cannot resist the chance of indulging
in a little benevolent feeling by giving a
poor man who was "out of work" another
quarter, which will bring him home to his
poor wife in a drunken frenzy for the third
time that week. They love to feel that
other people are dependent upon their
charity, and so they indulge their own
desires, and pauperize and degrade those
who are the instruments of their luxurious
feelings of benevolence.
Our Lord Jesus disliked all such benevo-
[ 140]

Che iteonber of $ig <£t*aciou£ Wozb0
lent work done for reward. The only re
ward we have any right to expect for our
charitable deeds is the knowledge that our
Father knows that at any rate we have
wanted to help our fellows. If we do our
good works to be seen of men, or to make
ourselves feel more comfortable merely,
then we are despised by the God who sees
our hearts. The real good deeds of the
world are done quietly, and they that do
them are not anxious for praise or recog
nition. The real good deeds of the world
do not dwell long as objects of delightful
self-idolatry in the hearts of those who do
them. Real charity is like the offering
which is placed upon God's altar, and is
given then to the needy as from God,
while the names of those who placed it
upon the altar are treasured only in the
memory of God.
It sometimes seems that more harm is
done in the world by the foolish good
people than by the clever bad people. But
that is simply because good people often
mistake the mere absence of evil for effi
ciency. It is a very hard thing to do real
good in the world. Benevolent feelings
are not the sole qualification. We must
get outside of ourselves and think not of
our own feelings at all, but of the present
conditions and future prospects of our
[ Hi ]

Che f©onber of 1$x0 «Brariou0 Woztt0
fellows whom we wish to help to perma
nent happiness. It takes time and imagi
nation and thought and experience really to
help a family who are in misfortune. The
gentle goodness of the dove is not enough
till it is added to the worldly wisdom of
the serpent.
If you have not the time or the experi
ence to give to the work of finding out how
you best can help those in need around
you, you must get the advice and coopera
tion of those who have. Money without
sympathetic knowledge generally does more
harm than good. Yet all good work must
be personal work in the end. Mere in
stitutions and machinery are helpless un
less they are devices for multiplying the
points of contact of the world with real
personalities. We cannot form an office
for the dispensing of sympathy, and have
a card-index file there, and inform appli
cants for sympathy that they must fill in
upon cards the cause for which they want
sympathy and the amount of it they de
sire. The real good work of the world is all
done by personal contact. But there are
so few great personalities in the world that
we need institutions and societies for the
purpose of spreading their influence more
widely. Yet the few great personalities in
school or pulpit or hospital or charity
[142]

Che IBonber of §x0 <$ratiou0 WatH0
office cannot do all the work of this kind that
is needed. Every man or woman ought to
be doing a little of such work, looking after
some one man or woman or family with
real personal and human interest.
We may then apply this teaching of our
Lord to ourselves as follows :
Do charity for the sake of helping
others, and not for the sake of being seen
of men or of making yourself feel more
comfortable. Do some of it personally with wisdom
and care, without expecting recognition or
thanks. Give only to such charities as are re
lieving distress in such a way as to build up
manhood and character at the same time.
The truest charity is to give a man the
chance to become independent of all char
ity, the best way to help a man is to help
him to help himself. That is the work that
the Father seeth in secret and rewards
openly, for the joy in the heart of the man
who is doing such work cannot be hid.
"Oberlin was rescued from death in the snow
between Strasbourg and the Ban de la Roche by
a wagoner who declined reward. 'Tell me at
least your name,' said Oberlin. 'Tell me,' said
the wagoner, 'the name of the Good Samaritan.'
'His name is not on record in the Bible.' 'Then
permit me to withhold mine.' "
[143]

II
PRAYER
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the
hypocrites are : for they love to pray standing in
the synagogues and in the corners of the streets,
that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto
you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy
closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray- to
thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father
which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as
the heathen do : for they think that they shall be
heard for their much speaking.
Be not ye therefore like unto them : for your
Father knoweth what things ye have need of, be
fore ye ask him.
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our
Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. — Matt.
6: 5-13. [ H4]

Che tfconber of pg «5raciou0 Woxt>0
i. The Essence
THERE are two kinds of prayer, pri
vate prayer and public prayer. Our
Lord communicates to us in this section of
the sermon something of his own spirit in
both forms of prayer.
The verse opening with the words "But
thou when thou prayest" gives us the
secret of success in private devotion. The
verses opening with the words " But when
ye pray " define for us the true spirit of
public worship.
The essential quality in both forms of
prayer is sincerity. The best guarantee of
sincerity in private prayer is secrecy. One
has not fully lived until one has discovered
what it is to enter into one's secret chamber
and to shut the door for a time of quietness
and prayer. For the mystery of this expe
rience is that when all the world is closed
out and the soul believes itself to be most
alone, then it is that another presence is
felt in the sanctuary, then it is that the still
small voice of God is heard most clearly.
Alone, yet not alone ; for one discovers that
while all the outer doors are closed there
is a secret inner door that leads into the
Father's house. Through it he passes in
unto us and communes with us as friend
with friend. In times of secret prayer we
10 [ HS ]

Che Woxibtx of p£ <©racioug t©orbg
find that our souls are not isolated cells in
the universe, but are anterooms into the
very presence-chamber of the King.
And what is the reward which the Father
gives openly to those who pray to him in
secret ? It is that poise of character, that
perfect peace which the world appreciates
with reverence and devotion, but cannot
understand. We meet people in life who
always seem to have come straight from
the company of some supremely noble
friend. The secret of this mysterious per
sonal power and charm lies in the inner
life. Private prayer is the cultivation of the
inner life. It is the practise of companion
ship with God. In the life of our Lord we
find him in public times of stress and trial
ever calm and serene. It was because in
the early morning hours, in the quiet of the
mountain-top, alone with God, he had faced
the evil day and passed through the agony.
Regular times of self-struggle and devo
tion, lived in secret in the presence of God,
there lies the mystical source of the most
mysteriously beautiful thing the world con
tains — the Christian character.
In public prayer one great pledge of sin
cerity is brevity. We are not informing an
unknown potentate at great length of our
particular needs. We are children at our
Father's knees. Our prayers tell him that
[146]

Che tBonbet of $x0 4Bxatiau0 Wozi>0
we are ready and willing to receive the good
things which he is ever ready and willing
to give us. We are not bombarding the ears
of an unwilling listener. We are asking One
who loves us for the things he loves to give
us; we are praying for wisdom to know
what things we would like to have most
of all. " The waterman in the boat," says
Matthew Henry, "who with his hook
takes hold of the shore, doth not thereby
pull the shore to the boat, but the boat to
the shore. So in prayer we do not draw
the mercy to ourselves, but ourselves to the
mercy." It was at this time that our Master gave
to his disciples the prayer that teaches us to
pray — the Lord's Prayer. I cannot be
lieve that this prayer was given, as has been
generally supposed, as a mere pattern
prayer. I cannot believe that it was spoken
by our Lord to the people, in much the
same way as a theological professor might
preach a temperance sermon to his class,
merely to show them how it ought to be
done. Surely at the first it was prayed
rather than delivered. Our Lord wholly
identified himself with us. The perfect
Representative of humanity prayed here
for the first time the perfect prayer of
humanity. "After this manner pray ye," — and
[H7]

Che fteonber of f$i0 <tBzatxoix0 Wozttg
then the little band, all standing up with
bowed heads, were led in prayer by their
Master and Lord in that open-air temple
among the hills. The prayer he prayed
was so deep and universal in its appeal that
it has remained the supreme expression of
the religious aspiration and longing of the
human race ever since. At the parliament
of religions in Chicago, when men of every
divergent faith were met together, it was
sought to frame a prayer broad enough to
include the aspirations embodied in all
these differing religions. After a time it
was found that the Lord's Prayer alone
fitted the needs of all and offended the con
victions of none. And that great cosmo
politan gathering was closed by the Lord's
Prayer, repeated in unison by men of every
race and every faith.
Oh that we could approach it as a new
discovery with a freshness unspoiled by our
constant familiarity with it ! It is the
supreme expression of the noblest attitude
of the human soul towards the Unseen. If
morality is the noblest human attitude
towards those forces and persons which
are known and seen in life, religion is the
noblest human attitude towards the invisi
ble forces, towards that great Person who
is unseen, whose being is shrouded in
mystery too high for our poor minds fully
[148]

Che iBonber of I^ig «5racioug Wozb0
to comprehend. One of the supreme ques
tions of existence is, How shall we act
towards the mysterious and unknown
forces of life ? What shall our attitude be
towards that part of life which is altogether
outside our own control or that of any
man ? Our Lord's answer to this ques
tion is in this prayer.
Through the whole prayer runs the con
trast between heaven and earth — heaven,
the great blue firmament that spreads above
us in all its splendid purity, its mystery and
exalted sublimity; and our earth below,
filled with toil and sin and sorrow and
death. These are taken as fitting symbols
— heaven, of the unseen world of God's
very presence, pure, lofty, universal; and
earth, of the actual, sordid human life in
which we live. Earth is the actual, heaven
is the ideal. Earth is what is; heaven is
what is becoming. Earth is the present
unfinished state of the task ; heaven is the
perfect work. Heaven is the world as it is
in God's mind and heart ; earth is the world
as it is, alas, in man's mind and heart.
The supreme adventure of the faith of Jesus
is in the conviction that earth is becoming
heaven ; that man's base conception of life
is gradually being transformed into God's
glorious dream; that the unknown, the
unrevealed, the mysterious in life is all
[ H9]

Che fteonber of 1$x0 <&xatwu0 Wozb0
love, if we could but know it; that grad
ually, as the revelation of God's great
thought is worked out through men, we
shall see more and more clearly that the
great power outside ourselves is "Our
Father." "Our Father," the Master prayed, and,
lo, a new spirit came into the hearts of that
first band of Christians gathered upon the
mountain-top, rich and poor, educated and
unlearned. Men, women, and children
heard the prayer, and knew that, from
henceforth to the end of time, all men
were capable of standing as near to the
Father's heart as their little company did
that day. Far beneath, slowly curling up
wards, was seen the smoke from the hearth
stones of the villages and towns of their
native land; upon the distant horizon
loomed the hills of foreign peoples, stran
gers to their religion and their tongue; but
all men seemed near to them — all men
became their brothers in that moment when
the Master prayed, "Our Father."
Then came sentence after sentence of
short, simple, earnest petition. Our Father,
thou art shrouded in mystery to men, far
above thy poor children in wisdom and
power and breadth of vision. Thou art in
heaven, thy children upon the earth. Frail
men, we cannot understand thy ways, we
[i5° J

«n\)z nfjormec ot ignji <4PtuuuU0 i©orb£
cannot even see thee as thou art. Thou
art our Father, but "our Father which art
in heaven."
Thou art in heaven; thee we have not
seen in all thy majesty upon the earth.
Thy name alone we know, and the ways by
which thou dost make thyself known to us.
Help us to reverence all things good and
beautiful and noble, all life which is thy
manifestation of thyself to the world. May
all the culture and attainment of our lives
be rooted in reverence ! " Hallowed be thy
name." Grant that we may be thy fellow-workers
in this world, thine instruments in making
our earth a heaven. Help us to be faithful
and honest in our business in life, that we
may bear our part in the conversion of the
world to loyalty to thee. "Thy kingdom
come." It is easy for us to imagine and dream of
a heaven where thy will is perfectly done.
Oh, may we so live that thy will may be
done here and now ! Thy will, not ours, be
done. Thy will be done, not merely in the
heaven of which we dream, but in our every
day earth, in our daily lives. "Thy will be
done in earth as it is in heaven."
We live in a world of whose nature we
are almost wholly ignorant, surrounded
by uncertainty and mystery. We cannot
[ 151 ]

Che Wtmmx ot ipt$ ^ratiou? wozo^
surely plan for our own safety and health.
When we have done all, we are in a world
that is not our world but thine. We de
pend upon thee for our lives. We trust thee
to send to us that which is best for us. We
love life; we would live another day;
give us this day that which makes life pos
sible, a little love, a little work, a little hope.
"Give us this day our daily bread."
These are the things for which we pray,
O God — for brotherliness, for reverence,
for work, for obedience, for health. We
pray thee to give us these things, but there
are other things also we pray thee to take
away from us — the debts we owe and can
not pay thee, and our weak and continual
surrender to temptation. We want to be
able to look the whole world in the face.
How can we do so when so many of us feel
the memory of the failures and sins of the
past with such an unhappy sense of guilt ?
We pray both for forgiveness and for the
forgiving spirit. Trust us again, O God;
help us to trust others again. "Forgive us
our debts as we forgive our debtors."
For the present, we pray for our daily
bread. For the past, we pray for forgive
ness. For the future, we pray for strength
in the day of temptation. We fear the
temptation of the coming days, O God. We
are no heroes who can confidently dare the
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C&e J©onber of iptg ©ractoug Wnxtt0
worst that the enemy of our souls can do
unto us. We would flee temptation when
we can; let us not, O Father, be tempted
above that we are able. "Lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil."
To this prayer the early Church has
affixed its doxology, which may indeed
have been uttered in unison by those who
heard it for the first time. Truly, all
churches have affixed their doxology to it.
It is universal in its appeal. So long as the
human race exists these will be the things
for which true men and women in their
noblest moments will long to pray. The
prayer comes to a fitting conclusion in the
doxology which tells of the power and the
love of God. "The sun is but a little
spark of his infinite love ; the sea is but one
drop of his goodness." May the prayer
never become for the Christian Church a
vain repetition, but may its constant and
thoughtful use bring us nearer to the spirit
of him who taught us to pray to Thee our
Father ! " For thine is the kingdom, and
the power, and the glory for ever. Amen."
2. The Petitions
@ttt Jatber tojjttj art in ibeaben.
If I thoroughly appreciated these first words
of the Lord's Prayer, Our Father which art in
[153]

Che iDonber of $& <©ractou£ wazw
heaven, and really believed that God, who made
heaven and earth and all creatures, and has all
things in his hand, was my Father, then should I
certainly conclude, with myself, that I also am a
lord of heaven and earth; that Christ is my
brother, Gabriel my servant, Raphael my coach
man, and all the angels my attendants at need,
given unto me by my heavenly Father, to keep
me in the path, that unawares I knock not my
foot against a stone. Luther.
Question. "Our Father": what is that?
Answer. God would thereby affectionately
encourage us to believe that he is truly our
Father, and that we are truly his children, so
that we may cheerfully and with all confidence
pray to him even as dear children ask their
dear father. Luther's Catechism.
As to the Lord's Prayer, although it be an easy
thing to say "Our Father" with the mouth, yet
there are very few that can, in the spirit, say the
two first words in that prayer. Bunyan before the Justices.
Jesus said, "Wherever there are two, they are
not without God." Oxyrhynchus Logion.
Great God, and wilt thou condescend
To be my Father and my friend ?
I, a poor child, and thou so high,
The Lord of earth and air and sky.
Ann Gilbert.
[154]

Che 3@onber of 1$x0 <*Bzatxou0 t©orbg

|)aIIoffica be Cfjp name.
This is the thing that I know, and which, if
you labor faithfully, you shall know also: that
in reverence is the chief joy and power of life —
reverence for what is pure and bright in your
own youth ; for what is true and tried in the age
of others; for all that is gracious among the
living, great among the dead, and marvelous in
the Powers that cannot die. Ruskin.
Suppose a river or a drop of water, an apple
or a sand, an ear of corn or an herb : God know
eth infinite excellences in it more than we. God
the Author and God the End is to be beloved in
it. Oh, what a treasure is every sand when truly
understood ! Who can love anything that God
made too much ? What a world would this be,
were everything beloved as it ought to be !
Traherne.
What life wouldst thou lead ? Wouldst thou
love God alone ? God alone cannot be beloved.
He cannot be loved with a finite love, because
he is infinite. Were he beloved alone, his love
would be limited. He must be loved in all with
an unlimited love, even in all his doings, in all
his friends, in all his creatures. Everywhere in all
things thou must meet his love. Ibid.
CI)? kingdom tome.
The kingdom of God among men is nothing
else than a restoration to a happy life; or, in
other words, it is true and everlasting happiness. Calvin.
[I55l

Che IBonber of ^x0 <&zatxoxx0 iteorbjtf
I had great longings for the advancement of
Christ's kingdom in the world; and my secret
prayers used to be in great part taken up with it.
If I heard the least hint of anything that happened
in any part of the world, that appeared, in some
respect or other, to have a favorable aspect on
the interests of Christ's kingdom, my soul eagerly
catched at it, and it would much animate and re
fresh me. I used to be eager to read public news
letters mainly for that end, to see if I could not
find some news favorable to the interest of re
ligion in the world.
Jonathan Edwards' Personal Narrative of his Youth.
Cbp hull be Bone in earth as it is in beaten.
As the great Francis Bacon taught the world,
the secret of power in nature is correspondence
with its laws. It was exactly the same lesson
which Jesus Christ taught the world in relation
to prayer. Prayer is fruitful, and is offered in
spirit and in truth, exactly in proportion as it is
not an attempt to fight against the laws of God's
good government, but an attempt to correspond
or cooperate with his purpose. Gore.
We pretend to do God's will in the general,
but when we come to particulars we stick at it.
A Puritan Preacher.
In His will is our peace. Dante.
<55u>e ue this Jap our Satlp breall.
The brevity of the petition is a proof of our
trust in our Father's care. MiJLLER.
[156]

Che f©onber of $ig <*Bra«oug IBorbjS
"The prayer of modern competition is, 'Give
me my daily bread.' "
"'Aye, sir,' said a poor Norfolk peasant, 'I
am very poor, but I am very happy. I am con
tented ; and why am I contented ? Why, be
cause I have all I want; I have Christ and a
crust, and I am satisfied.' 'Christ and a crust,'
he repeated, 'and that is enough for any one.'"
Snto forgibe ue out Hcuts, as toe forgfae our
Jjebtons.
Augustine somewhere calls this a "terrible
petition," and when we sufficiently think of it we
feel that he is right. For do I not ask a terrible
thing when I ask God to do to me as I do to my
most evil neighbor and most hurtful enemy ?
Whyte.
Shall I send you to the old saying which con
tains as much wisdom as was ever put by man
into three words — the saying, Forgive and for
get ? Forgiving and forgetting is the pardon
which we desire from God; therefore, forgiving
and forgetting is the pardon which we are to
grant to man. Hare.
3nB lean net not into temptation, but Seltner us
from all cbtl.
Every temptation has its times, and runs its
course. There is a season, short or long, when
the transgression is still a temptation. There
is a time when, if it is not exactly easy to resist
the temptation, it is at least possible to do so.
[ 157 ]

Che D&onbet of $x0 <t£i*aciou£ Wozb0
For, as Thomas a Kempis, a great master in the
things of the soul, says: "There first cometh to
the mind a bare thought of evil, then a strong im
agination thereof, afterwards delight and an evil
motion, and then consent." He, then, who offers
this prayer must keep a sleepless watch over his
thoughts. He must beware of those times, and
places, and states of mind in which evil thoughts
intrude themselves. And he will soon learn by
experience that a vacant mind and an idle life
is a very door of temptation. A busy life, by
God's blessing, is a safe life. Curiosity concern
ing evil and forbidden things is a cause of many
temptations assailing the soul. It is impossible
to quench such sinful curiosity in a human heart;
and unhappily, once learned, the knowledge of sin
is a knowledge that is never forgotten. Times of
reaction, also, times of isolation and mental de
pression, are often times when it is most difficult
to keep temptation out of the heart. Loneliness,
also, supplies a vantage-ground to temptation.
Now it is just at such times as these that our
Lord encourages us to look up and offer the
prayer, Lead us not into temptation, or, Support
and deliver us when we are tempted. And this
God sometimes does by means of providential
interpositions, of which every gracious heart has
many records. Sometimes, again, he suddenly
chills the heart against the offered evil, or draws
the soul into the secret of his pavilion till the
storm of temptation is wholly overpast. Whyte.

[158]

Che fBonbet of f$x0 oBraciou^ WozH0

3. The Condition of Forgiveness
Jor if pe fotfftue men tbelr trespasses, pout
beabenlp lather null also forjribe pou :
4Sut if pe forgtbe not men tbetr trespasses, neither
bill pour father forjribe pour trespasses.
Matt. 5: 14, 15.
The condition of forgiveness is a for
giving spirit. Only through the experience
of forgiving comes the possibility of under
standing the wonderful meaning of being
forgiven. What we pray must be prayed
by our lives as well as by our lips. We
cannot really want to be forgiven unless we
want to forgive.
The ordinary man only wishes to avoid
the consequences of his sin ; the religious
man longs most of all to have the personal
relation of love and trust reestablished be
tween himself and the one whom he has
wronged. This is forgiveness. But even
God cannot make the unforgiving man
understand the meaning of forgiveness.
He that cuts himself off from his fellow men
by his unforgiving spirit cuts himself off
from God. He who trusts his fellow men is
trusted by God.

[i59]

Ill
FASTING
Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypo
crites, of a sad countenance : for they disfigure
their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast.
Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head,
and wash thy face ;
That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto
thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father
which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matt. 6: 16-18.
SINCERITY in charity, sincerity in
private devotion, sincerity in public
worship, sincerity in all religious obser
vances, reality and not show — this is the
tenor of Jesus' thought throughout all this
teaching. Our Lord pronounces no opin
ion for or against this particular religious
observance of fasting. Each man must
decide its value to bis own life, in the
quietness of his own heart. But one thing
is certain, the show or parade of fasting
has no value. If fasting has good results,
they will be in the secret life. Asceticism
is dangerous if it is known to others; its
parade is an easy way of enlisting sym-
[160]

Che D&onber of f$x0 <Bxacxtm0 Woxt0
pathy and admiration. But self-denial and
self-discipline are of value if practised
quietly in one's own life. Their resultant
reward will be only known openly by the
strength of character which they produce.

[161]

TRUST IN GOD

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also.
The light of the body is the eye : if therefore
thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be
full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in
thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
No man can serve two masters: for either he
will hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will
hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot
serve God and mammon.
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for
your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall
drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.
Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment ?

Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not,
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet
your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
much better than they ?
Which of you by taking thought can add one
cubit unto his stature ?
And why take ye thought for raiment ? Con
sider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they
toil not, neither do they spin :
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the
oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of
little faith ?
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall
we eat ? or, What shall we drink P or, Where
withal shall we be clothed ?
{For after all these things do the Gentiles seek :)
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have
need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness ; and all these things shall be added
unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow : for
the morrow shall take thought for the things of
itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Matt. 6: 19-34.

TRUST IN GOD
WE have surmised that the preceding
sections of the Sermon have been
addressed to the little band of enthusiasts
who stood in the center of the class — men
who were ready to give up all for their
Master, and who were preparing now to
go forth to preach his gospel, to suffer and
some of them to die for him. For them
our Lord had opened up the heart of his
gospel in the beatitudes. He had shown
them the sole method by which the gospel
could be spread in the world, through the
lives of those who lived it, and who were
thereby the very salt and candle of bright
ness to the world, its sweetness and its
light. He had defined their connection
with the old faith of their fathers as being
fulfillers and not destroyers of it. He had
insisted upon the necessity for simple sin
cerity in the new religion. He had led
them in their first common prayer as
Christians. But there were other sections
of his class for whom also our Lord had a
special message. There were some present
who had found little to interest them in the
[165]

Che 3©onber of pg <j5raciou^ iteorbg
Master's words. They were sitting listen
ing, and yet they were so distracted as not
to hear. They were so worried that they
could not fix their attention upon what
their Lord was saying. Some of them
were rich, and were distressed by the fear
of material loss, worried for the safety
of their possessions; some of them were
getting old and were tortured by the fear
of poverty; some of them perhaps were
filled with constant anxiety about their
future health; some, without being rich,
were simply worldly-minded, distressed
about social position or the competitive
display of their neighbors. There they
sat, distracted and distressed, attracted by
the Master's words, and yet not able
wholly to attend to them or to comprehend
them and make them their own. It is
to them that our Lord now speaks, show
ing them tenderly and beautifully their
own worldly-mindedness in allowing secular
anxiety to gain such a hold over them.
"Your treasures" are the things which
you value above all others in the world.
Our Lord warns these worrying souls not
to let their "treasures," the possessions
which they value most or envy most in
life, be things which the world can take
away from them — fine clothing and
piles of rich embroidery such as the opu-
[ 166 ]

<€0e mtmotz ot i?x& <&xacxaxi0 Woxtt0
lent of Jesus' time delighted in, the prey
of the moth; treasures of precious metal
workmanship, hid in the field for safety,
but ever liable sooner or later to rust away
there and be destroyed ; money and beauti
ful things of value, stored in the house,
through the clay walls of which some day
a thief might break through to steal,
leaving their owners desolate.
Let your treasures not be of these earthly
things about which you must worry, but
let them be of the heavenly things, the
things of the heart which cannot be de
stroyed by moth or rust, nor stolen by
thieves. "Have an inward life, have an
interior life, have a soul; you are no richer
than your heart is." Where the heart is,
that is where the treasure is.
Simplicity of spirit, peace of soul, self-
forgetful kindness, sterling character,
mercifulness, purity of heart, friendliness,
moral stamina — these are the treasures
of the heart, the treasure in heaven, which
nothing, not even death itself, can take
away or destroy. For the whole Sermon
on the Mount is an expansion of the beati
tudes. About such possessions there is no
need fof over-anxious worrying and secu
lar anxiety. " Love is deeper than at first
it can be thought. It never ceaseth but in
endless things." [167]

Che i©onber of 1^x0 <&zatwxx0 Woxb0
But the natural objection to this high
position is that one cannot wholly aim at
such ideal possessions. It is said, one
must have two aims in life and serve two
masters. One must, it is true, make a
character, but one must just as truly make
a living. One must serve both God and
mammon. Every one does. Purity of
heart and mercy will not pay the rent or
buy the bread. So there are two sides to
life, the sentimental and the practical.
From one point of view we are all brothers,
and together can call God "Our Father,"
but in practical life every man must look
out for himself, irrespective of what hap
pens to his neighbor.
Our Lord disagrees wholly with this
position. He asserts that a man cannot
serve two masters, for either he will hate
the one, and love the other, or else he will
hold to the one, and despise the other.
He asserts that a life, to be a truly human
life, must be a unity; the eye must be
single, the ideal must be one, the loyalty
must be undivided. An eye that does not
see the world as one is drunken and evil;
it does not lead one safely in the light,
it is confused and dark. Even so one must
see life whole. One must be able to unify
one's own life. One must be wholly loyal
to God. And for many, since Jesus spake
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Cije f^onber of 1$i0 ©raciou^ t©orbg
these great words, the supreme ideal in
life, under which every interest of life has
been subordinated, has been loyalty to
God in Christ; or, to put the same ideal
in another way, the supreme question de
termining every side of life's activity has
been, What would Jesus have me to do ?
Choose, then, which ye will serve —
God or mammon ? Either of them claims
undivided allegiance, in business, family,
social, political life. Your life must be
"of a piece." A double-motived life is
dark and dangerous to itself and others.
But, again, the same objection remains,
that if a man does subsume his whole life
under loyalty to Christ, he will not get on
in this world. He may be good, it is true,
but, as far as the course of events in the
world goes, he will be no good, for under
such a principle he cannot gain any posi
tion of influence among men at all.
This objection our Lord now meets
with the simple answer, Have faith in God.
After all, it is a very little that any of us
can do toward our own material welfare,
but let us do our simple duty and leave the
rest to God. Trust God. Leave some
place for God even in your practical in
terests and common affairs. He will not
forsake the man who trusts him. Why
worry so much about your clothes and
[ 169 ]

Che t&onbet of pg <Dtattou$ 3©otbg
about your body ? Keep the treasures of
the heart, preserve the integrity of the soul,
and God will look after these other mat
ters. Is not the life more than meat, and
the body than raiment? "A Greek might
have used the latter phrase," says the
author of De Profundis; "it is full of
Greek feeling. But only Christ could have
said both, and so summed up life so per
fectly for us."
Then, we can imagine, Jesus paused,
and in the pause the song of birds burst
out all around them, rejoicing in the fresh
ness of the air and the sunshine, and a
great flock of birds was seen skimming
together over the mountainside. The
wind, too, brought them the scent of the
flowers springing up in the fields all around
them. Here was the illustration he needed.
"Behold," said Jesus, "the birds of the
heaven." And then, to these sorely tried
souls in his audience, came the tender,
human, sympathetic message, almost hu
morous in its portrayal of the uselessness
of worry to add even an inch to the stat
ure. Take no anxious thought. God, the
Father of these birds, the Father of these
flowers, is your Father, too, and careth for
you. Jesus loved the world. His life
touched life on every side. No man ever
praised the flowers more simply and sin-
[i7°]

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cerely than he did in the words, "I say
unto you, that even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these."
Since his great sermon, the birds and the
flowers have become sacramental in their
meaning for us. Of the sparrows, says the
Roadmender, "They are dumb Chrysos-
toms ; but they preach a golden gospel, for
the sparrows are to London what the rain
bow was to eight souls out of a waste of
waters — a perpetual sign of the remem
bering mercies of God."
These words of our Lord have often
been used as a kind of excuse for indolence
and inefficiency in life. Lazy and useless
people have considered God as being under
bonds to look after them, because they did
not take the trouble to look after them
selves. Faith in God has been too often
a synonym for unpardonable carelessness
and stupidity on the part of those who,
because they were not much tempted to
the sins of passion or appetite, have passed
in the general esteem as good people. It
would be well for such people to follow
Christ's command and to "consider the
lilies." It is true that the lilies do not
trouble much in toiling and spinning to
provide themselves with gayly colored
clothing or to obtain their few material
necessities of rain and air and sun. God
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looks after these things for them, because
they do their part. They obey the laws of
God with unceasing struggle after perfect
obedience. They are self-supporting and
ask charity of nobody. They do simply
and quietly the work for the world for
which they were created. They toil, not
for themselves, but for others. They fill
the lives of others with beauty and with
fragrance, and they give their lives in un
questioning obedience for the good of the
world. Worry, then, the over-anxious thought
for the morrow, is unreasonable (verse 26),
and useless (verse 27), and irreligious
(verse 32). O ye of little faith, trust the
Father, seek the first things first, and all
these other things shall be added unto you,
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of these things.

[172]

JUDGING OTHERS

"Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
judged : and with what measure ye mete, it shall
be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy
brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is
in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me
pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a
beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of
thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to
cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Matt. 7: 1-5.

JUDGING OTHERS
I
UNCHARITABLE JUDGMENT
THE key to the line of reasoning in the
Sermon is in the needs of the audi
ence. After the wonderful words of cheer
to which we have just been listening, there
came, as we may imagine, a pause. The
next words were spoken to a very different
section of the company. At the edge of
the little band of listeners there were, as
we picture them, some who were not
wholly in sympathy with the spirit of the
occasion. There was unkindly criticism
in their eyes. They were there rather to
find out what was wrong with the gather
ing than to learn humbly the meaning of
the teaching for themselves. They, too,
were attracted to Jesus, but the superior
pride of a censorious spirit kept them from
whole-heartedly taking up the cross and
following him. We can imagine that their
critical looks were now bent upon some in
that audience who were finding in the teach
ing of the Master the very words of life,
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but who were known to these critics to
have been no better in their past lives than
they ought to have been. So hard glances
were being cast from this dark outer circle
of criticism upon some in whose hearts the
new life was beginning to awake. Short,
and stern almost in their emphasis, after
the pause, came the words of our Lord,
"Judge not, that ye be not judged."
The two main thoughts in this passage
are these :
I. When you judge another man you
tell the world far more about yourself than
you do about that other man. All our
judgments are self-revealing. The world
judges us by the way we judge others.
2. Jesus of Nazareth worked for many
years in a carpenter's' shop. Here he uses
a carpenter's illustration, drawn from his
own business. It is the illustration of the
chip and the beam. Our Lord does not
mean that, when I condemn in a censorious
spirit the faults of another, there are hidden
faults of a much more serious nature in my
own life. We often meet people who we
know have not any of the grosser faults
concealed in their characters and yet who
do indulge largely in unkind criticism. The
meaning of Jesus is not that when a man
condemns another unkindly there are al
ways faults in himself, if they were only
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known, that are worse than the faults
which he condemns.
No, what Jesus evidently means is this:
When I judge another man uncharitably,
the sin of censoriousness, which I am actu
ally and openly committing, is a greater
fault than all the sin I am condemning, in
proportion as a beam of wood is greater
than a chip. In other words, the sin of
censoriousness in the eyes of Jesus is the
sin that blinds a man's judgment of others
more than any other sin.
Yet we must judge others. Life could
not be lived otherwise than in the constant
appraisement and valuation and testing of
our fellow men. And we must judge some
harshly if we are to be honest and efficient.
As Bengel added in a note to the first
verse, "Yet a dog is to be reckoned a dog,
and a swine a swine." Our Lord does not
forbid us to judge our fellow men. His
words mean, Judge not except in a manner
in which you yourself are willing to be
judged; for as you judge you will be
judged. "This is a great law, and all
human history is its exposition and
justification." Bengel again gives us the true method of
judgment, for he adds to the words, " Judge
not," these three principles, "Sine scientia,
sine necessitate, sine amore" — not to judge
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without knowledge, or without necessity,
or without love. We can express the same
principles in another way when we say,
Do not judge another harshly, unless facts
drive you to it, unless you hate to do it,
unless there is something in the man that
you like.
If any one of us was set down to an ex
amination paper upon some exact science,
and required to produce all the absolute
knowledge we had upon that subject, how
humiliated we should be to find how hazy
and inexact our ideas upon it are ! Yet we
are all ready with snap-judgments to dog
matize about inner motives in the intricate
and mysterious lives of our fellow men.
How seldom in life do we come upon an
actual fact! We live and breathe in the
midst of opinions, all of which are more
or less inaccurate. Oh, let us be humble
in assuming an air of infallibility about
the reputed sins of our fellow men ! How
often the "one fact more" that we do not
know, would explain all! As long as we
like to find fault, we are sure to be in error.
Necessity upon the basis of proven facts
must drive us unwillingly to the unfa
vorable conclusion, if we are acting in
Jesus' spirit. Oh, what pleasure we do
often get in summing up the life of a com
petitor thus, " He is a fine fellow, bright and
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capable, but — ! " What secret joy do we
not get out of that "but" ! And we do not
know that the beam is sticking out of our
own eye all the time.
Lastly, we are no judge of another man
till we know him well enough to have
found something to like in him. Judge
not another man without knowledge, neces
sity, and love. Let us not judge another at
all unless we know, unless we hate to do it,
unless we like him.

[i79]

II
GUARDING THE SANCTITIES
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they
trample them under their feet, and turn again and
rend you. — Matt. 7 : 5.
THIS passage has been interpreted as
inculcating " reserve in communicat
ing religious privileges," "prudence and
good judgment in the dissemination of
the gospel." Its teaching has been para
phrased in this way: "Do not speak the
deepest secrets of your soul to those who
have never been in the same mental or
spiritual condition." These are certainly
allowable applications of our Lord's words,
and yet one wonders if Jesus did not use
them with a simpler and more general
significance, of which these applications
are special cases. Indeed, the whole re
maining portion of the Sermon reads as
though it were spoken especially to young
people, meeting the special needs and as
pirations of the heart of youth. If so, we
can imagine still another section of the
audience, consisting of the young men and
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Ct)e JEonbet of l$i0 <©ratioug Woxb0
women upon whom the Master's eyes now
rested with infinite love and compassion,
as he spake the closing words of his won
drous teaching. It was for the young who
were just entering life, especially, that our
Lord brought forth these great lessons of
reverence, ambition, fairness, earnestness,
efficiency, and stability in life. To them
he speaks as an elder brother; his heart
yearns over them, as he thinks how little
they appreciate the priceless value of the
pearls they now possess — youth, inno
cence, strength, love. The spirit of the
teaching is perhaps not so much that of
Aristotle when he said, "Do not fling wis
dom into the streets," as it is that of
Heine, when he sang over the head of a
child that song, "Thou art like a flower,"
and when he felt that above all he must
place his hands on the child's head, pray
ing that God would preserve it so sweet
and beautiful and pure. At any rate,
whether we take the first reference to have
been to the youthful auditor or to the
youthful religion, the warning of the pas
sage is against destruction of the holy things
of life by the brute forces of mammon and
lust, or their desecration by ignorance and
insincerity. This, again, is a matter of character
rather than of arrangement. There are
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some persons who can speak of the most
sacred subjects in the ordinary flow of
conversation with such simple sincerity
and reverence as to impress all, even the
most thoughtless, with a like sense of rev
erent awe. There are some who can be
in the world and yet not of the world.
The great man, as Confucius said long
ago, is he who can go through the world
keeping his child heart. For the heart
of the child is the most holy, the most
precious pearl.
The intuitive knowledge by which one
can guard the sanctities of life from dese
cration by the vulgar forces of the world, in
sincerity and greed — this is the rare gift of
God to those who serve him with a whole
heart. The man whose gospel is in solu
tion in his life, his message cannot fail but
be heard with reverence. The wisdom
which teaches one how to preserve the
sacred pearls of life in all their pristine
purity, the wisdom which teaches one
when to speak the secret of the heart and
when to be silent — that is the wisdom
which cometh down from on high.

[182]

THE WAY OF LIFE

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye
shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he
that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it
shall be opened.
Or what man is there of you, whom, if his son
ask bread, will he give him a stone ?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent ?
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more shall
your Father, which is in heaven, give good things
to them that ask him ?
Therefore all things, whatsoever ye would that
men should do to you, do ye even so to them : for
this is the law and the prophets.
Enter ye in at the strait gate : for wide is the
gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruc
tion, and many there be which go in thereat :
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the
way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that
find it. — Matt. 7 : 7-14.

THE WAY OF LIFE
I
THE ENTRANCE
FROM this section to the end of the Ser
mon we have the prototype of the
Pilgrim's Progress. In verse seven the pil
grim awakes, arouses himself, asks, seeks,
knocks, that he may gain entrance to the
road that leads to the Celestial City. In
verse thirteen he comes to the parting of the
ways. Let him be sure that he chooses the
strait gate and the narrow way. In verse
fifteen there come over the wall false guides
in sheep's clothing, to tempt him out of the
narrow way. Let him not be deceived by
them, but keep on upon his chosen path.
In verse twenty-one he has come to the
gate of the heavenly kingdom, and cries for
admission, but the Master saith, "Not
every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter in." Let him see to it that he has the
passport by which alone he can enter there.
And in verse twenty-four he has come unto
the city that hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God. May it prove
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Che iteotiber of %i0 <©racioug t&ort>£
that the home he builds is indeed the build
ing of God, founded upon the rock of ages,
and not upon the shifting sands of time.
It is the lesson of true ambition that is
taught in this passage. To the young our
Lord says, Do not think that God has given
capacities of success to others, while he has
had a spite against you, and given you no
materials for a successful life. Even a
human father, with all the common selfish
ness inherent in humanity, would not so
mock and deceive his child. And you are
God's dear children.
The failure is not in God's giving; it is
in your asking, your seeking, your knock
ing. God wants every one of his children
to have a happy and successful life. Within
our own control are the elements by which
we can make our lives such. Our coopera
tion is needed. We need to ask earnestly,
to seek diligently, to knock insistently.
Success does not come of itself. It must be
won. It is a gift of God, but it comes only
to those who prove themselves worthy of it.
As long as you are a son of God, God will
give you the truest success in life. And you
are a son of God as long as you treat your
fellow men as brothers, as long as you keep
the Golden Rule.
Then turning to the band of enthusiastic
disciples for whom, at the opening of the
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Che Wantizx of l$x0 <6racioug t£oro£
Sermon, he had defined the nature of his
"fulfilling" work, Jesus called them to
witness as to the truth of his words, any that
were fathers among them, and gave them
the last great example of the "fulfilment"
of the law and the prophets — all are ful
filled in the law of love. There is no deeper
wisdom, there is no higher doctrine, than
this. Ask God, then, for the dearest
wishes of your heart. With a love ten
derer than that of any earthly parent, he
wishes you to be happy. Seek the way of
life you long for. Knock upon the door that
will lead you to the success you dream of.
God will give you more than you ask.
He will help you to find something more
precious than you seek. He will open for
you the door into regions more glorious than
those of which you dream. God's will for
you is your happiness, but, oh, how few
are willing to trust him, how few are ready
to believe that he knows best wherein the
happiness of his children lies ! We so often
ask for future pain, seek for deceptive van
ity, knock upon the door that leadeth to de
struction, and wonder why the Father does
not give to us, does not open to us. It is
because he loves us so.
Discipline is necessary to fit us for true
success, to give us the capacity for the deep
est happiness. So the way the Father leads
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us often seems narrow and rugged, yet it is
the way that leadeth to life. The broad,
easy way, down which the Father would
not have us go, leadeth to destruction. Lo,
our Lord bends down and pleads with the
young people of that little company to
choose the narrow way ! Oh, well may he
plead, for he, too, chose it and walked
therein himself until the end !
"And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
He taught his brethren and inspired
To suffer and to die."
Ask for all the great things of life, and
they are yours; but the way to them is
often steep and rugged. Yet there are ever
blood-stained footprints upon the rocks,
footprints of One who has passed that way
before, and in whose loving presence for
ever we shall, in thankful understanding of
our Father's leading of us, enjoy the ful
ness of joy.
To be a seeker is to be of the best sect next to
a finder; and such an one shall every faithful,
humble seeker be at the end. Happy seeker!
happy finder! Cromwell, to his daughter.
" Strait is the gate and narrow is the way . . .
and few there be that find it." This is a rather
mournful view, not only of human life, but of
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Che fEonbet of i^x0 <&xatxmx0 tteorbg
the kingdom of heaven itself; as if it would be
thinly populated, and give us at last rather a
representation of infinite failure on the one side
than of real success and completeness on the
other. That, however, would be a wrong ex
position of the text. Into what kingdom is it
that you are anxious now to enter ? Above all
things you wish to enter into the kingdom of
music. Very well. This is the New Testa
ment doctrine concerning the kingdom of music :'
"Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which
leadeth unto excellence in music, and few there
be that find it." You have to study night and
day, you have no time for yourself, you are at
it, always at it, or getting ready for it, criticizing
or being criticized, repeating, rehearsing, going
over it again and again, still higher and higher.
If that is the law of your little kingdom of music,
why should it not be the law of the larger king
dom of life, which includes all beauty and learn
ing and music and power ? Who can live the
gospel of Christ ? I cannot ; I do not. How,
then, shall we classify ourselves ? As those who
are striving to enter in. Parker.

I l89]

II
THE FALSE GUIDES
Beware of false prophets, which come to you
in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening
wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good
fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither
can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is
hewn ddwn, and cast into the fire.
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he
that doeth the will of my Father which is in
heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord,
have we not prophesied in thy name ? and in thy
name have cast out devils? and in thy name done
many wonderful works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never
knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Matt. 7: 15-23.
ONE of the hardest questions for the
young people of any generation to
decide is this, What should their attitude
be towards the new leaders and new move-
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Che 3@onbet of f$x0 45zatxoxx0 Woxb0
ments of their day ? If they could but af
ford to wait, time would test these leaders
and these movements for them. If the
tree proves to be good, its very leaves
will be used for all time for the healing of
the nations; if it proves to be corrupt, it
will be hewn down and cast into the fire
in the end. But we cannot afford always
to await the slow testing of time. How
shall we, who are entering life, know
whether these new movements, which are
coeval with ourselves and have not yet been
tested by the test of time, ought to command
our support or not ? There is always so
much good about them, otherwise they
could not exist at all. They have so much
that is beautiful to say; they prophesy in
the name of the Lord ; they heal some of the
diseases of mankind; in the name of the
Lord they cast out devils; they do many
wonderful works. Ought we, therefore,
to throw in our lot with them, to become
loyal to the new prophets and enthusiastic
supporters of the new cause ?
In this passage our Lord gives to his
class two tests to apply to the new leaders
and the new movements of their time, and
these tests apply equally to the new prophets
of all times. First, as to the real character
of the leaders themselves. Outwardly they
all present a fair appearance; they are in
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sheep's clothing. They all claim to have
the best interests of the fold at their heart.
But the supreme question is as to their
inward personal character which is mani
fested in their personal life.
Now it is quite possible that a false
leader may not be a thief or adulterer or
murderer, but there is one moral defect
which is always to be found in the lives
of false prophets and by which they may
inevitably be detected; and that is, that
they are always self-seekers. Inwardly they
are ravening wolves, seeking for them
selves, caring not so much for the truth, if
they can only gain fame or wealth or recog
nition for themselves.
There is, in other words, this curious
connection between error and immorality,
that only self-seeking can account for delib
erate continuance and leadership in error.
God always leads humble, diligent, self-
forgetful souls ultimately into the truth. He
who deliberately refuses to accept the new
truth, as it gradually becomes plain to him,
because its acceptance by him would result
in loss of power or reputation to himself —
he is a false prophet. "Blind mouths" is
the curiously mixed metaphor used by Mil
ton to describe such men. Instead of being
" seers," they refuse to see, and are volunta
rily blind to the truth ; instead of feeding
[ 192]

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the flock, they themselves are "mouths,"
ever seeking for good things for them
selves. If we apply this first test to the
movements of human society known to
ourselves, we shall find again that all his
tory is the justification of the validity of
the test. A social or religious movement is
sound and true in proportion as its leaders
and prophets are free from the vice of self-
seeking. Error cannot long exist in minds
and hearts which are humbly seeking the
truth for the good of their fellow men.
But it is when we mistake the intensity of
our prejudices for the strength of our con
victions, when we begin to fight for victory
instead of for the truth, when we fall hope
lessly in love with our own opinions and
refuse to see the other side, that we run the
risk of becoming false prophets.
Jesus himself submitted to this test. Not
a trace of self-seeking is to be found through
his whole life. He was poor, homeless,
despised and rejected of men, and the
movement of which he is the Author and
Finisher is the greatest and most permanent
of history. By this test we can judge of
every other movement — Foreign Missions,
Socialism, Trades Unionism, the Salvation
Army, Dowieism. In the character of the
leaders lies the fate of any movement.
The other test is the fruit of the new
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Che iteonber of i$t0 <©ractou£ woxn0
teaching and doctrine in the lives of those
who identify themselves with it. Of fruit
there are two things to be said : First, that
it grows naturally out of the tree; it is not
something fastened upon the tree from
without. Second, that fruit grows for the
good of others, for their refreshment and
nourishment and life, and not for the orna
mentation and delectation of the tree itself.
We are then to test new movements, in
the second place, by the natural character
of those who adhere to them, not by the
beauty of their worship, by their saying,
Lord, Lord, in many kinds of music ; not
by the sublimity of their preaching or
prophecy; not by the comfort and peace
the faith gives to the neophyte; not by its
occasional show-works of benevolence ; not
by its casting out of devils, healing of dis
eases and doing of many wonderful works,
but by the value to others in the world of
the daily lives of its adherents.
Our Lord submits himself also to this
test in his own life and for the life of his
Church. He hereby disowns all other
kinds of Christians except those the tenor
of whose life is the "will of my Father who
is in heaven." He disclaims all connection
with those whose religion is merely spec
tacular or emotional.
As Bruce has pointed out, "In connec-
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^tje 3©ottDer of I|)i0 <*3raciou£ 3©orb£
tion with such lofty thoughts as the beati
tudes, the precept to love enemies and the
admonition against care, there is a great
temptation to substitute sentimental or
esthetic admiration for heroic conduct."
But our Lord expressly dissociates him
self here with any future Christian Church
or believers, who have not the one thing
needful, the fruit. "In that day," when
the secrets of all hearts will be known, our
Lord will publicly disown them, in spite of
all their wonderful works. Thus, for the
last time and in the most solemn manner in
the Sermon, Jesus emphasizes the essential
inwardness of his gospel.

|)e tbat Uoetb, tbe toill of mp jFat&er tobitb is in
heaben.
If you want to get into the eighteenth century,
to feel its pulses throb beneath your finger, be
content sometimes to leave the letters of Horace
Walpole unturned, resist the drowsy temptation
to waste your time over the learned triflers who
sleep in the seventeen volumes of Nichols, nay,
even deny yourself your annual reading of Bos-
well or your biennial retreat with Sterne, and
ride up and down the country with the greatest
force of the eighteenth century in England. No
man lived nearer the center than John Wesley.
Neither Clive nor Pitt, neither Mansfield nor
Johnson. You cannot cut him out of our na
tional life. No single figure influenced so many
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Che Wattotx of p£ oBfracioug 3@orb£
minds, no single voice touched so many hearts.
No other man did such a life's work for
England. Augustine Birrell.
MY LORD AND I
"I worked for men," my Lord will say
When we meet at the end of the King's highway.
"I walked with the beggar along the road,
I kissed the bondsman stung by the goad,
I bore my half of the porter's load.
And what did you," my Lord will say,
"As you traveled along the King's highway?"
"I made life sweet," my Lord will say
When we meet at the end of the King's highway.
"I smoothed the path where the thorns annoy,
I gave the mother back her boy,
I mended the children's broken toy.
And what did you," my Lord will say,
"As you traveled along the King's highway?"
"I showed men God," my Lord will say,
"As I traveled along the King's highway.
I eased the sister's troubled mind;
I helped the blighted to be resigned;
I showed the sky to the souls grown blind.
And what did you ? " my Lord will say
When we meet at the end of the King's

highway.

Robert Davis.

[196]

Ill
THE SAFE HOME
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of
mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise
man, which built his house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;
and it fell not: for it was founded upon a
rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of
mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto
a foolish man, which built his house upon the
sand :
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and
it fell : and great was the fall of it.
And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended
these sayings, the people were astonished at his
doctrine :
For he taught them as one having authority,
and not as the scribes. — Matt. 7 : 24-29.
WE come now to the great closing
picture of the Sermon. It is a
magnificently definite promise that the
home of his soul who doeth these sayings
cannot be touched by any evil thing.
The rain and flood and wind, symbols of
[197]

Che tBonber of f$i0 <®xatxoxx0 f@orb£
all the destructive forces of the world, are
impotent against him. His life is founded
upon an eternal rock. It is one last, in
sistent reminder that "the soul of religion
is the practick part." The promise is not
to him that heareth, but to him that doeth,
these sayings.
It is the most solemn warning to those
who are but play-acting and posing in re
ligion, who hear and praise and pray, but
who do not. Like children they are only
playing at building houses upon the sand.
Their religion is only a worthless imitation.
When rain or flood or storm come, and there
is need of a firm foundation, in the day
of violent temptation or sore trial, the house
they have been building for their eternal
home fails them. The character and repu
tation which have been the result of all the
work of their lives, and which are orna
mented with such beautiful profession and
devotion, are carried away to destruction.
They are left in despair, themselves : their
house has fallen; and great was the fall
of it.
The truth which our Lord specially em
phasizes here is that "the test of all spiritual
fabrics is their capacity to stand the strain
of wild and rough experiences." One of
the best commentaries upon these words is
to be found in the official report of the San
[ 198 ]

Che H&onbet of f$x0 4Bxatiou0 Woztsg
Francisco earthquake commission: "The
most violent destruction of buildings, as
every one knows, was on the ' made ground.'
Next came the sand dune areas. On the
rocky slopes and ridge-tops the destruc
tion was at a minimum. On some of the
hills even the chimneys withstood the
shock." Our Lord applies this same truth to
spiritual fabrics — to character. "Ye shall
know them by their fruits," and it is in
periods of strain and stress, when the high
ways are broken up and the waters are out,
that the fruits in character of the true life are
known. Sudden prosperity, newly-won
freedom, deep sorrow and loss — these are
some of the wild and rough experiences in
which the stability of the human soul is
tested. The test of love in the thirteenth
chapter of First Corinthians is found in this
fact, that love lasts. So, here, the supreme
test of the Christian character given by our
Lord is that it lasts. "These sayings of
Mine," the doing of which is the sole
foundation for lasting happiness in life,
may be summed up in many ways. Perhaps
these three words as well as any other cover
the main teachings of the Sermon on the
Mount as to the essential qualities of life —
Struggle, Love, Trust.
Poverty, hungering, thirsting, praying,
[199]

Che Wmxbtx of §x0 <£raciou£ Wnzb0
asking, seeking, knocking, striving to enter
— in such ways is the necessity of struggle
in life insisted upon.
Breathing through the whole is the in
spiration to friendly love to one's fellow
men in the spirit of the Golden Rule,
because all men are children in the home
of a common Father.
Most deeply loved of all are those pas
sages that speak of the great comfort which
comes from the spirit of trustfulness in the
wisdom and tenderness of God. Our Lord
pleads with us that we should trust our
Father absolutely where we cannot plan,
where we cannot understand, that we
should believe that the heart of the Eter
nal is most wonderfully kind.
The people, we read, wondered most of
all at the authority of the Teacher. He
spoke of things of which he had immediate
knowledge and of which he was sure. He
spoke in such a way as to prove that he had
power and authority over the lives of men.
That authority, that power, remains. To
day he is for us no dead Teacher. He is
a present power in our lives. He alone it
is who is able to save this teaching from
being merely a beautiful but hopelessly
high ideal, and to breathe into our common
daily lives something of the very spirit of his
Sermon on the Mount. [ 200 ]

Che tteonber of $t£ <aBraaou0 Woxb0
O lead me, Man divine,
Where'er thou will'st, only that I may find
At the long journey's end thy image there,
And grow more like to it. For art not thou
The human shadow of the infinite Love
That made and fills the endless universe ? —
The very word of Him, the unseen, unknown,
Eternal Good, that rules the summer flower
And all the worlds that people starry space.
Richard Watson Gilder.

THE END

[201 ]

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