 4. Jesus and his fellow townsmen And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his custom was he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Asaius, and when he had opened the book he found the place where it was written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down, and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Chapter 4 Verses 14 to 21 The Lord's Sermon upon the Mount seems such an enlargement of these words of the prophet as might, but for the refusal of the men of Nazareth to listen to him, have followed his reading of them he recorded. That, as given by the evangelist, they correspond to neither of their differing originals of the English and Greek versions, ought to be enough in itself to do away with the spiritually vulgar notion of the verbal inspiration of the scriptures. The point at which the Lord stops in his reading is suggestive. He closes the book, leaving the words, and the day of vengeance of our God, or, as in the Septuagint, the day of recompense, unread. God's vengeance is as holy a thing as his love, yea, is love, for God is love, and God is not vengeance. But apparently the Lord would not give the word a place in his announcement of his mission. His heroes would not recognize it as a form of the Father's love, but as vengeance on their enemies, not vengeance on the selfishness of those who would not be their brother's keeper. He had not begun with Nazareth, neither with Galilee. A prophet has no honour in his own country, he said, and began to teach where it was more likely he would be heard. It is true that he wrought his first miracle in Cana, but that was at his mother's request, not of his own intent, and he did not begin his teaching there. He went first to Jerusalem, there cast out the buyers and sellers from the temple, and did other notable things alluded to by St. John, then went back to Galilee, where, having seen the things he did in Jerusalem, his former neighbours were now prepared to listen to him. Of these the Nazarenes, to whom the sight of him was more familiar, retained the most prejudice against him. He belonged to their very city. They had known him from a child, and lo indeed are they in whom familiarity with the high and true breeds contempt. They are judged already. Yet such was the fame of the new prophet, that even they were willing to hear in the synagogue what he had to say to them, thence to determine for themselves what claim he had to an honourable reception. But the eye of their judgment was not single, therefore was their body full of darkness. Should Nazareth indeed prove to their self-glorifying satisfaction the city of the great prophet, they were more than ready to grasp at the renown of having produced him. He was indeed the great prophet, and within a few minutes they would have slain him for the honour of Israel. In the ignoble even the love of their country partakes largely of the ignoble. There was a shadow of the hateless vengeance of God in the expulsion of the dishonest dealers from the temple with which the Lord initiated his mission. That was his first parable to Jerusalem. To Nazareth he comes with the sweetest words of the prophet of hope in his mouth, good tidings of great joy, of healing and sight and liberty, followed by the godlike announcement that what the prophet had promised he was come to fulfil. His heart, his eyes, his lips, his hands, his whole body is full of gifts for men, and that day was that scripture fulfilled in their ears. The prophecy had gone before that he should save his people from their sins. He brings an announcement they will better understand. He has come, he says, to deliver men from sorrow and pain, ignorance and oppression, everything that makes life hard and unfriendly. What a gracious speech, what a daring pledge to a world whelmed in tyranny and wrong, to the women of it, I imagine, it sounded the sweetest. In them woke the highest hopes. They had scarce had a hearing when the Lord came, and thereupon things began to mend with them and are mending still, for the Lord is at work and will be. He is the refuge of the oppressed. By its very woes as by bitterest medicine he is setting the world free from sin and woe. This very hour he is curing its diseases, the symptoms of which are so varied and so painful, working nonetheless faithfully that the sick, taking the symptoms for the disease, cry out against the incompetence of their physician. What power can heal the broken hearted they cry? And indeed, it takes a God to do it. But the God is here, in yet better words than those of the prophet, spoken straight from his own heart, he cries, come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He calls to him every heart, knowing its own bitterness, speaks to the troubled consciousness of every child of the Father. He has come to free us from everything that makes life less than bliss essential. No other could be a gospel worthy of the God of men. Everyone will, I presume, confess to more or less misery. Its apparent source may be this or that. Its real source is, to use a poor figure, a dislocation of the juncture between the created and the creating life. The primal evil is the parent of evils unnumbered, hence of misery's multitudinous, under the weight of which the arrogant man cries out against life, and goes on to misuse it, while the child looks around for help, and who shall help him but his Father? The Father is with him all the time, but it may be long ere the child knows himself in his arms. His heart may be long troubled as well as his outer life. The dank mists of doubtful thought may close around his way, and hide from him the light of the world. Cold winds from the desert of foiled endeavour may sorely buffet, and for a time baffle his hope. But every now and then the blue pledge of a great sky will break through the clouds over his head, and a faint aura will walk his darkest east. Gradually he grows more capable of imagining a world in which every good thing thinkable may be a fact. Best of all, the story of him who is himself the good news, the gospel of God, becomes not only more and more believable to his heart, but more and more ministered to his life of conflict, and his assurance of a living Father who hears when his children cry. The gospel, according to this or that expounder of it, may repel him unspeakably. The gospel, according to Jesus Christ, attracts him supremely, and ever holds where it has drawn him. To the priest, the scribe, the elder, exclaiming against his self-sufficiency in refusing what they teach, he answers, It is life or death to me. Your gospel I cannot take. To believe as you would have me believe would be to lose my God. Your God is no God to me. I do not desire him. I would rather die the death than believe in such a God. In the name of the true God, I cast your gospel from me. It is no gospel, and to believe it would be to wrong him in whom alone lies my hope. But to believe in such a man, he might go on to say, with such a message as I read of in the New Testament, is life from the dead. I have yielded myself to live no more in the idea of self, but with the life of God. To him I commit the creature he has made, that he may live in it and work out its life, develop it according to the idea of it in his own creating mind. I fall in with his ways for me. I believe in him. I trust him. I try to obey him. I look to be rendered capable of and receive a pure vision of his will, freedom from the prison house of my limitation, from the bondage of a finite existence. For the finite that dwells in the infinite and in which the infinite dwells is finite no longer. Those who are thus children indeed are little gods, the divine brood of the infinite Father. No mere promise of deliverance from the consequences of sin would be any gospel to me. Less than the liberty of a holy heart, less than the freedom of the Lord himself will never satisfy one human soul. Father, set me free in the glory of thy will, so that I will only as thou willest. Thy will be at once thy perfection and mine. Thou alone art deliverance, absolute safety from every cause and kind of trouble that ever existed, anywhere now exists, or ever can exist in thy universe. But the people of the Lord's town, to whom he read, appropriating them the gracious words of the prophet, were of the wise and prudent of their day, with one and the same breath they seem to cry. These things are good, it is true, but they must come after our way. We must have the promise to our Father's fulfilled, that we shall rule the world, the chosen of God, the children of Abraham and Israel. We want to be a free people, manage our own affairs, live in plenty, and do as we please. Liberty alone can ever cure the woes of which you speak. We do not need to be better, we are well enough. Give us riches and honour, and keep us content with ourselves, that we may be satisfied with our own likeness, and thou shalt be the Messiah. Never, perhaps, would such be men's spoken words, but the prevailing condition of their minds might often well take form in such speech. Whereon will they ground their complaint, should God give them their heart's desire? When that desire given closes in upon them with a torturing sense of slavery, when they find that what they have imagined their own will was but a suggestion they knew not whence, when they discover that life is not good yet they cannot die, will they not then turn and entreat their maker to save them after his own fashion? Let us try to understand the brief elliptical narrative of what took place in the synagogue of Nazareth on the occasion of our Lord's announcement of his mission. This day, said Jesus, is this scripture fulfilled in your ears? And went on with his divine talk. We shall yet know, I trust, what the gracious words were which proceeded out of his mouth. Surely some who heard them still remember them, for all bear him witness, and wondered at them. How did they bear him witness? Surely not alone by the intensity of their wandering gaze, must not the narrator mean that their hearts bore witness to the power of his presence? That they felt the appeal of his soul to theirs? That they said in themselves, Never man spake like this man. Must not the light of truth in his face, beheld of such even as knew not the truth, have lifted their souls up truthward? Was it not the something true, common to all hearts, that bore the wandering witness to the graciousness of his words? Had not those words found away to the pure human, that is, the divine in the men? Was it not therefore that they were drawn to him, all but ready to accept him, on their own terms, alas, not his? For a moment he seemed to them a true messenger, but truth in him was not truth to them. Had he been what they took him for, he would have been no saviour. They were, however, though partly by mistake, well disposed toward him, and it was with a growing sense of being honoured by his relation to them, and the property they had in him, that they said, Is not this Joseph's son? But the Lord knew what was in their hearts. He knew the false notion with which they were almost ready to declare for him. He knew also the final proof to which they were, in their wisdom and prudence, about to subject him. He did not look likely to be a prophet, seeing he had grown up among them, and had never shown any credentials. They had a right to prove positive. They had heard of wonderful things he had done in other places. Why had they not first of all been done in their sight? Who had a claim equal to theirs? Who so capable as they to pronounce judgment on his mission, whether false or true? Had they not known him from childhood? His words were gracious, but words were nothing. He must do something, something wonderful. Without such conclusive, satisfying proof, Nazareth, at least, would never acknowledge him. They were quite ready for the honour of having any true prophet, such as it seemed not impossible the son of Joseph might turn out to be, recognised as their townsman, one of their own people. If he were such, theirs was the credit of having produced him. Then, indeed, they were ready to bear witness to him, take his part, adopt his cause, and before the world stand up for him. As to his being the Messiah, that were merest absurdity. Did they not all know his father, the carpenter? He might, however, be the prophet whom so many of the best in the nation were at the moment expecting. Let him do something wonderful. They were not a gracious people or a good. The Lord saw their thought, and it was far from being in his mind. He desired no such reception as they were at present equal to giving a prophet. His mighty works were not meant for such as they, to convince them of what they were incapable of understanding or welcoming. Those who would not believe without signs and wonders could never believe worthily with any number of them, and none should be given them. His mighty works were to rouse the love and strengthen the faith of the meek and lowly in heart. Of such as were ready to come to the light, and show that they were of the light. He knew how poor the meaning the Nazarenes put on the words he had read. What low expectations they had of the Messiah, when most they longed for his coming. They did not hear the prophet while he read the prophet. At sight of a few poor little wonders, nothing to him, to them sufficient to prove him such a Messiah as they looked for, they would burst into louder claim and rush to their arms, eager, his officers and soldiers, to open the one triumphant campaign against the accursed Romans, and sweep them beyond the borders of their sacred country. Their Messiah would make of their nation the redeemed of the Lord, themselves the favourites of his court, and the tyrants of the world. Salvation from their sins was not in their hearts, not in their imaginations, not at all in their thoughts. They had heard him read his commission to heal the broken hearted. They would rush to break hearts in his name. The Lord knew them and their vain expectations. He would have no such followers, no followers on false conceptions, no followers whom wonders would delight, but no wise better. The Nazarenes were not yet of the sort that needed but one change to be his people. He had come to give them help. Until they accepted his, they could have none to give him. The Lord never did mighty work in proof of his mission. To help a growing faith in himself and his father he would do anything. He healed those whom healing would deeper heal, those in whom suffering had so far done its work that its removal also would carry it on. To the Nazarenes he would not manifest his power. They were not in a condition to get good from such manifestation. It would but confirm their present arrogance and ambition. Wonderful works can only nourish a faith already existent. To him who believes without it a miracle may be granted. It was the Israelite indeed whom the Lord met with miracle. Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou, thou shalt see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Those who laughed him to scorn were not allowed to look on the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus. Peter, when he would walk on the water, had both permission and power given him to do so. The widow received the prophet, and was fed. The Syrian went to the prophet, and was cured. In Nazareth, because of unbelief, the Lord could only lay his hands on a few sick folk. In the rest was none of that leaning toward the truth which alone can make room for the help of a miracle. This they soon made manifest. The Lord saw them on the point of challenging a display of his power, and anticipated the challenge with a refusal. For the better understanding of his words, let me presume to paraphrase them. I know you will apply to me the proverb, physician, heal thyself, requiring me to prove what is said of me in the eponium, by doing the same here. But there is another proverb. No prophet is accepted in his own country. Unexpected, I do nothing wonderful. In the great famine Elijah was sent to no widow of the many in Israel, but to a Sidonian. And Elisha cured no leper of the many in Israel, but Naaman the Syrian. There are those fit to see signs and wonders. They are not always the kin of the prophet. The Nazarenes heard with indignation their wonder at his gracious words was changed to bitterest wrath. The very beams of their ugly religion were party spirit, exclusiveness, and pride in the fancied favour of God, for them only of all the nations. To hint at the possibility of a revelation of the glory of God to a stranger, far more to hint that a stranger might be fit to receive such a revelation than a Jew was in offence reaching to the worst insult, and it was cast in their teeth by a common man of their own city. Thou art but a well-known carpenter's son, and dost thou teach us? Darest thou imply a divine preference for cuponium over Nazareth? In bad odor with the rest of their countrymen they were the prouder of themselves. The whole synagogue observed rose in a fury. Such a fellow a prophet. He was worse than the worst of Gentiles. He was a false Jew, a traitor to his God, a friend of the idol-worshipping Romans. Away with him his townsmen led the van in his rejection by his own. The man of Nazareth would have forestalled his crucifixion by them of Jerusalem. What, a Sidonian woman fitted to receive the prophet than any Jewess? A heathen worthier to be kept alive by miracle in time of famine than a worshipper of the true God? A leper of Damascus less displeasing to God than the lepers of his chosen race? It was no longer condescending approval that shone in their eyes. He, a prophet, they had seen through him. Soon had they found him out. The moment he perceived it useless to pose for a prophet with them, who had all along known the breed of him, he had turned to insult them. He dared not attempt in his own city, the deceptions with which, by the help of Satan, he had made such a grand show and fooled the idiots of cuponium. He saw they knew him too well, were too wide awake to be cousined by him, and to avoid their expected challenge fell to reviling the Holy Nation. Let him take the consequences to the brow of the hill with him. How could there be any miracle for such? They were well satisfied with themselves, and nothing almost sees miracles but misery. Need, and the upward look, the mood ready to believe when and where it can, the embryonic faith is dear to him whose love would have us trust him. Let any man seek him, not in curious inquiry whether the story of him may be true or cannot be true, in humble readiness to accept him altogether if only he can, and he shall find him. We shall not fail of help to believe because we doubt. But if the questioner be such that the dispersion of his doubt would only leave him in disobedience, the power of truth has no care to effect his conviction. Why cast out a devil, that the man may the better do the work of the devil? The child like doubt will, as it softens and yields, minister nourishment with all that was good in it to the faith germ at its heart. The wise and prudent unbelief will be left to develop its own misery. The Lord could easily have satisfied the Nazarenes that he was the Messiah. They would but have hardened into the nucleus of an army for the subjugation of the world, to a warfare with their own sins, to the subjugation of their doing and desiring, to the will of the great Father, all the miracles in his power would never have persuaded them. A true convincement is not possible to hearts and minds like theirs. Not only is it impossible for a low man to believe a thousandth part of what a noble man can, but a low man cannot believe anything as a noble man believes it. The man of Nazareth could have believed in Jesus as their saviour from the Romans. As their saviour from their sins, they could not believe in him, for they loved their sins. The king of heaven came to offer them a share in his kingdom, but they were not poor in spirit, and the kingdom of heaven was not for them. Gladly would they have inherited the earth, but they were not meek, and the earth was for the lowly children of the perfect Father. End of chapter 4 Chapter 5 Part 1 Of the Hope of the Gospel This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Jordan. The Hope of the Gospel by George McDonald Chapter 5 The Heirs of Heaven and Earth Part 1 And he opened his mouth and taught them saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew chapter 5 Verses 2, 3 and 5 The words of the Lord are the seed sown by the sower. Into our hearts they must fall, that they may grow. Meditation and prayer must water them, and obedience keep them in the sunlight. Thus will they bear fruit for the Lord's gathering. Those of his disciples, that is, obedient hearers, who had any experience in trying to live, would, in part, at once understand them. But as they obeyed and pondered, the meaning of them would keep growing. This we see in the writings of the apostles. It will be so with us also, who need to understand everything he said, neither more, nor less, than they to whom first he spoke. While our obligation to understand is far greater than theirs at the time, in as much as we have had nearly two thousand years' experience of the continued coming of the kingdom he then preached, it is not yet come. It has been all the time, and is now drawing slowly nearer. The sermon on the Mount, as it is commonly called, seems the Lord's first free utterance in the presence of any large assembly of the good news of the kingdom. He had been teaching his disciples and messengers, and had already brought the glad tidings that his father was their father to many besides, to Nathaniel for one, to Nicodemus, to the woman of Samaria, to everyone he had cured, everyone whose cry for help he had heard. His epiphany was a gradual thing, beginning where it continues with the individual. It is impossible even to guess at what number may have heard him on this occasion. It seems to have gone up the Mount because of the crowd, to secure a somewhat opener position whence he could better speak, and thither followed him all those who desired to be taught of him, accompanied, doubtless, by not a few in whom curiosity was the chief motive. Disciple, or gazer, he addressed the individuality of everyone that had ears to hear. Peter and Andrew, James and John are all we know as his recognized disciples, followers, and companions at the time, but while his words were addressed to such as had come to him desiring to learn of him, the things he uttered were eternal truths, life in which was essential for every one of his father's children. Therefore they were for all. He who heard to obey was his disciple. How different, at the first sound of it, must the good news have been from the news anxiously expected by those who waited for the Messiah. Even the Baptist in prison lay listening after something of quite another sort. The Lord had to send him a message by eyewitnesses of his doings to remind him that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, or his ways as our ways, that the design of God is other and better than the expectation of men. His summary of the gifts he was giving to men culminated with the preaching of the good news to the poor. If John had known these his doings before, he had not recognized them as belonging to the Lord's special mission. The Lord tells him it is not enough to have accepted him as the Messiah. He must recognize his doings as the work he had come into the world to do, and as in their nature so divine as to be the very business of the Son of God in whom the Father was well pleased. Wherein, then, consisted the goodness of the news which he opened his mouth to give them? What was in the news to make the poor glad? Why was his arrival with such words in his heart and mouth the coming of the kingdom? All good news from heaven is of truth, essential truth, involving duty, and giving and promising help to the performance of it. There can be no good news for us men except of uplifting love, and no one can be lifted up who will not rise. If God himself sought to raise his little ones without their consenting effort, they would drop from his foiled endeavour. He will carry us in his arms till we are able to walk. He will carry us in his arms when we are weary with walking. He will not carry us if we will not walk. Very different are the good news Jesus brings us from certain prevalent representations of the Gospel founded on the pagan notion that suffering is an offset for sin and culminating in the vile assertion that the suffering of an innocent man just because he is innocent, yea perfect, is a satisfaction to the Holy Father for the evil deeds of his children. As a theory concerning the atonement nothing could be worse either intellectually, morally or spiritually. Announced as the Gospel itself as the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven the idea is monstrous as any Chinese dragon. Such a so called Gospel is no Gospel however accepted as God sent by good men of a certain development. It is evil news, dwarfing, enslaving, news to the child heart of the dreariest damnation. Doubtless some elements of the Gospel are mixed up with it on most occasions of its announcement none the more is it the message received from him. It can be good news only to such as are prudently willing to be delivered from a God they fear but unable to accept the Gospel of a perfect God in whom to trust perfectly. The good news of Jesus was just the news of the thoughts and ways of the Father in the midst of his family. He told them that the way men thought for themselves and their children was not the way God thought for himself and his children. That the Kingdom of Heaven was founded and must at length show itself founded on very different principles from those of the kingdoms and families of the world meaning by the world that part of the Father's family which will not be ordered by him will not even try to obey him. The world's man it's great it's successful it's honourable man is he who may have and do what he pleases whose strength lies in money and the praise of men. The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is the man who is humblest and serves his fellows the most. Multitudes of men in no degree notable as ambitious or proud hold the ambitious the proud man in honour and for all deliverance hope after some shadow of his prosperity. How many, even of those who look for the world to come seek to the powers of this world for deliverance from its evils as if God were the God of the world to come only. The oppressed of the Lord's time looked for a Messiah to set their nation free and make it rich and strong. The oppressed of our time believe in money, knowledge and the will of a people which needs but power to be in its turn the oppressor. The first words of the Lord on this occasion were blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not the proud it is not the greedy of distinction it is not those who gather and hoard not those who lay down the law to their neighbours not those that condescend any more than those that shrug the shoulder and shoot out the lip in the kingdom of the Father that kingdom has no relation with or resemblance to the kingdoms of this world deals with no one thing that distinguishes their rulers except to repudiate it the Son of God will favour no smallest ambition be it in the heart of him who leans on his bosom the Kingdom of God the refuge of the oppressed the golden age of the new world the real Utopia the newest yet oldest Atlantis the home of the children will not open its gates to the most miserable who would rise above his equal in misery who looks down on anyone more miserable than himself it is the home of perfect brotherhood the poor the beggars in spirit the humble men of heart the unambitious the unselfish those who never despise men and never seek their praises the lowly who see nothing to admire in themselves therefore cannot seek to be admired of others the men who give themselves away these are the free men of the kingdom these are the citizens of the new Jerusalem the men who are aware of unessential poverty not the men who are poor in friends poor in influence poor in acquirements poor in money but those who are poor in spirit who feel themselves poor creatures who know nothing to be pleased with themselves for and desire nothing to make them think well of themselves who know that they need much to make their life worth living existence a good thing to make them fit to live these humble ones are the poor whom the lord calls blessed when a man says I am low and worthless then the gate of the kingdom begins to open to him for there enter the true and this man has begun to know the truth concerning himself whatever such a man has attained to he straight way forgets it is part of him and behind him his business is with what he has not with the things that lie above and before him the man who is proud of anything he thinks he has reached has not reached it he is but proud of himself and imagining a cause for his pride if he had reached he would already have begun to forget he who delights in contemplating where too he has attained is not merely sliding back he is already in the dirt of self satisfaction the gate of the kingdom is closed and he outside the child who clinging to his father dares not think he has in any sense attained while as yet as his father his father's heart his father's heaven is his natural home to find himself thinking of himself as above his fellows would be to that child a shuddering terror his universe would contract around him his ideal wither on its throne the least motion of self satisfaction the first thought thinking himself in the forefront of estimation would be to him a flash from the nether abyss God is his life and his lord that his father should be content with him must be all his care among his relations with his neighbour infinitely precious comparison with his neighbour has no place which is the greater is of no account he would not choose to be less than his neighbour he would choose his neighbour to be greater than he he looks up to every man otherwise gifted than he his neighbour is more than he all come from the one mighty father shall he judge the life thoughts of God which is greater and which is less in thus denying thus turning his back on himself he has no thought of saintliness no thought but of his father and his brethren to such a child heaven's best secrets are open he clambers about the throne of the father unrebuke his back is ready for the smallest heavenly playmate his arms are an open refuge for any blackest little lost kid of the father's flock he will toil with it up the heavenly stare up the very steps of the great white throne to lay it on the father's knees for the glory of that father is not in knowing himself God but in giving himself away in creating and redeeming and glorifying his children the man who does not house self has room to be his real self God's eternal idea of him he lives eternally in virtue of the creative power present in him with momently unimpeded creation he is how should there be in him one thought of ruling or commanding or surpassing he can imagine no bliss no good in being greater than someone else unable to wish himself other than he is except more what God made him for which is indeed the highest willing of the will of God his brother's well-being is essential to his bliss the thought of standing higher in the favor of God than his brother would make him miserable he would lift every brother to the embrace of the father blessed are the poor in spirit for they are of the same spirit as God and of nature the kingdom of heaven is theirs end of chapter 5 part 1 chapter 5 part 2 of the hope of the gospel this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Jordan the hope of the gospel by George McDonald chapter 5 the heirs of heaven and earth part 2 blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth expresses the same principle the same law holds in the earth as in the kingdom of heaven how should it be otherwise as the creator of the ends of the earth ceased to rule it after his fashion because his rebellious children have so long to their own hurt vainly endeavored to rule it after theirs the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor the meek shall inherit the earth the earth as God sees it as those to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs also see it is good all good very good fit for the meek to inherit and one day they shall inherit it not indeed as men of the world count inheritance but as the maker and owner of the world has from the first counted it so different are the two ways of inheriting that one of the meek may be heartily enjoying his possession while one of the proud is selfishly walling him out from the spot in it he loves best the meek are those that do not assert themselves do not defend themselves never dream of avenging themselves or of returning ought but good for evil they do not imagine it their business to take care of themselves the meek may indeed take much thought but it will not be for himself he never builds an exclusive wall shuts any honest neighbor out he will not always serve the wish but always the good of his neighbor his service must be true service self shall be no umpire in a fair of his man's consciousness of himself is but a shadow the meek man's self always vanishes in the light of a real presence his nature lies open to the father of men and to every good impulse is as it were empty no bristling importance no vain attendance of fancied rites and wrongs guards his door or crowds the passages of his house they are for the angels to come and go abandoned thus to the truth as the sparks from the gleaming river dip into the flowers of Dante's unperfected vision so the many souls of the visible world lights from the father of lights enter his heart freely and by them he inherits the earth he was created to inherit possesses it as his father made him capable of possessing and the earth of being possessed because the man is meek his eye is single he sees things as God sees them as he would have his child see them to confront creation with pure eyes is to possess it how little is the man able to make his own who would ravish all the man who by the exclusion of others from the space he calls his would grasp any portion of the earth as his own befalls himself in the attempt the very bread he has swallowed cannot so in any real sense be his there does not exist such a power of possessing as he would arrogate there is not such a sense of having as that of which he has conceived the shadow in his degenerate and lapsing imagination the real owner of his domain is that peddler passing by his gate into a divine soul receiving the sweetnesses which not all the greed of the so-counted possessor can keep within his walls they overflow the cup-lip of the coping to give themselves to the footfarer the motions aerial the sounds, the odours of those imprisoned spaces are the earnest of a possession for which he is ever growing his power of possessing in no wise will such inheritance interfere with the claim of the man who calls them his each possessor has them his as much as each in his own way is capable of possessing them for possession is determined by the kind and the scope of the power of possessing and the earth has a fourth dimension of which the mere owner of its soil knows nothing the child of the maker is naturally the inheritor but if the child try to possess as a house the thing his father made an organ will he succeed in so possessing it or if he do nestle in a corner of its case will he oust thereby the lord of its multiplex harmony sitting regnant on the seat of sway and drawing with violent touch from the house of the child the liege homage of its rendered wealth to the poverty of such a child are all those left who think to have and to hold after the corrupt fancies of a greedy self we cannot see the world as god means it save in proportion as our souls are meek in meekness only are we its inheritors meekness alone makes the spiritual retina pure to receive god's things as they are mingling with them neither imperfection nor impurity of its own a thing so beheld that it conveys to me the divine thought issuing in its form is mine by nothing but its mediation between god and my life is mine the man so dull as to insist that a thing is his because he has bought it and paid for it had better bethink himself that not all the combined forces of law justice and good will can keep it his while even death cannot take the world from the man who possesses it as alone the maker of him and it cares that he should possess it this man leaves it but carries it with him that man carries with him only its loss he passes unable to close hand or mouth upon any portion of it its oneness to him was but the changes he could make in it and the nearness into which he could bring it to the body he lived in that body the earth in its turn possesses now and it lies very still changing nothing but being changed is this the fine of the great buyer of land to have his fine pate full of fine dirt in the soul of the meek the earth remains an endless possession his because he who made it is his his as nothing but his maker could ever be the creatures he has the earth by his divine relation to him who sent it forth from him as a tree sends out its leaves to inherit the earth is to grow ever more alive to the presence in it and in all its parts of him who is the life of men how far one may advance in such inheritance while yet in the body will simply depend on the meekness he attains while yet in the body but it may be as Frederick Denison Maurice the servant of God thought while yet he was with us that the new heavens and the new earth are the same in which we now live righteously inhabited by the meek with their deeper opened eyes what if the meek of the dead be thus possessing it even now but I do not care to speculate it is enough that the man who refuses to assert himself seeking no recognition by men leaving the care of his life to the father and occupying himself with the will of the father shall find himself by and by at home in the father's house with all the father's property his which is more the possessor of the world he who has a thousand houses or he who without one house to call his own has ten in which his knock at the door would rouse instant jubilation which is the richer the man who his large money spent would have no refuge or he for whose necessity a hundred would sacrifice comfort which of the two possess the earth being a gripper or tent maker Paul which is the real possessor of a book the man who has its original and every following edition and shows to many an admiring and envying visitor now this now that in binding characteristic with possessor pride from secret shrine is able to draw forth and display the author's manuscript with the very shapes in which his thoughts came forth to the light of day or the man who cherishes one little hollow backed coverless untitled be thumbed copy which he takes with him in his solitary walks and broods over in his silent chamber always finding in it some beauty or excellence or aid he had not found before which is to him in truth as a live companion for what makes the thing a book is it not that it has a soul the mind in it of him who wrote the book therefore only can the book be possessed for life alone can be the possession of life the dead possess their dead only to bury them does not he then who loves and understands his book possess it with such possession as is impossible to the other just so may the world itself be possessed either as a volume unread or as the wine of a soul the precious lifeblood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured upon purpose to a life beyond life it may be possessed as a book filled with words from the mouth of God or but as the golden clasped covers of that book as an embodiment or incarnation of God himself or but as a house built to sell the Lord loved the world and the things of the world not as the men of the world love them but finding his father in everything that came from his father's heart the same spirit then is required for possessing the kingdom of heaven and for inheriting the earth how should it not be so when the one power is the informing life of both if we are the lords we possess the kingdom of heaven and so inherit the earth how many who call themselves by his name would have it otherwise they would possess the earth and inherit the kingdom such filled churches and chapels on Sundays anywhere suits for the worship of mammon yet verily earth as well as heaven may be largely possessed even now two men are walking abroad together to the one the world yields thought after thought of delight he sees heaven and earth embrace one another he feels an indescribable sense over and in them his joy will afterward in the solitude of his chamber break forth in song to the other oppressed with the thought of his poverty or ruminating how to make much into more the glory of the lord is but a warm summer day it enters in at no window of his soul it offers him no gift for in the very temple of god he looks for no god in it nor must there needs be two men to think and feel thus differently in what diverse fashion will anyone subject to ever changing mood see the same world of the same glad creator alas for men if it changed as we change if it grew meaningless when we grow faithless but for a morrow that may never come dread of the dividing death which works for endless companionship anger with one we love will cloud the radiant morning and make the day dark with night as evening having be thought ourselves and returned to him that feeds the ravens and watches the dying sparrow and says to his children love one another and the sunset splendor is glad over us the western sky is refulgent as the court of the father when the glad news is spread abroad that a sinner has repented we have mourned in the twilight of our little faith but having sent away our sin the glory of god's heaven over his darkening earth has comforted us end of chapter 5 part 2 chapter 6 of the hope of the gospel this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Jordan the hope of the gospel by George McDonald chapter 6 sorrow the pledge of joy blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted Matthew chapter 5 verse 4 grief then sorrow pain of heart mourning is no partition more between man and god so far is it from opposing any obstacle to the passage of god's light into man's soul that the lord congratulates them that mourn there is no evil in sorrow true it is not an essential good a good in itself like love but it will mingle with any good thing and is even so allied to good that it will open the door of the heart for any good more of sorrowful than of joyful men are always standing about the everlasting doors that open into the presence of the most high it is true also that joy is in its nature more divine than sorrow for although man must sorrow and god share in his sorrow yet in himself god is not sorrowful and the glad creator never made man for sorrow it is but a stormy straight through which he must pass to his ocean of peace he makes the joy the last in every song still I repeat a man in sorrow is in general far nearer god a man in joy gladness may make a man forget his thanksgiving misery drives him to his prayers for we are not yet we are only becoming the endless day will at length dawn whose every throbbing moment will heave our hearts god would we shall scarce need to lift them up now there are two doorkeepers to the house of prayer and sorrow is more on the alert to open than her grandson joy the gladsome child runs farther afield the wounded child turns to go home the weeper sits down close to the gate the lord of life draws nigh to him from within god loves not sorrow yet rejoices to see a man sorrowful for in his sorrow man leaves his heavenward door on the latch and god can enter to help him he loves I say to see him sorrowful for then he can come near to part him from that which makes his sorrow a welcome sight when Ephraim bemoans himself he is a pleasant child so good a medicine is sorrow so powerful to slay the moths that best and devour the human heart that the lord is glad to see a man weep he congratulates him on his sadness grief is an ill-favoured thing but she is love's own child and her mother loves her the promise to them that mourn is not the kingdom of heaven but that their mourning shall be ended that they shall be comforted to mourn is not to fight with evil it is only to miss that which is good it is not an essential heavenly condition like poorness of spirit or meekness no man will carry his mourning with him into heaven or if he does it will speedily be turned either into joy or into what will result in joy namely redemptive action mourning is a canker-bitten blossom on the rose-tree of love is there any mourning worthy the name that has not love for its root men mourn because they love love is the life out of which are fashioned all the natural feelings every emotion of man love modelled by faith is hope love shaped by wrong is anger verily anger though pure of sin love invaded by loss is grief the garment of mourning is oftenest a winding sheet the loss of the loved by death is the main cause of the mourning of the world the greek word here used to describe the blessed of the lord generally means those that mourn for the dead it is not in the new testament employed exclusively in this sense neither do I imagine it stands here for such only there are griefs than death sore afar and harder far to comfort harder even for god himself with whom all things are possible but it may give pleasure to know that the promise of comfort to those that mourn may specially apply to those that mourn because their loved have gone out of their sight and beyond the reach of their cry their sorrow indeed to the love divine involves no difficulty it is a small matter easily met the father whose elder son is ever with him but whose younger son is in a far country wasting his substance with riotous living is unspeakably more to be pitied and is harder to help than that father whose sons lie in the sleep of death much of what goes by the name of comfort is merely worthless and such as could be comforted by it I should not care to comfort let time do what it may to bring the ease of oblivion let change of scene do what in it lies to lead thought away from the vanished let new loves bury grief in the grave of the old love consolation of such sort could never have crossed the mind of Jesus would the truth call a man blessed because his pain would sooner or later depart leaving him at best no better than before and certainly poorer not only the beloved gone but the sorrow for him too and with the sorrow the love that had caused the sorrow blessed of God was restored to an absence of sorrow such a God were fitly adored only where not one heart worshipped in spirit and in truth the Lord means of course someone may say that the comfort of the mourners will be the restoration of that which they have lost he means blessed are ye although ye mourn for your sorrow will be turned into joy happy are they whom nothing less than such restoration will comfort but would such restoration be comfort enough for the heart of Jesus to give was ever love so deep so pure so perfect as to be good enough for him and suppose the love between the parted two had been such would the mere restoration in the future of that which once he had be ground enough for so emphatically proclaiming the man blessed now blessed while yet in the midnight of his loss and knowing nothing of the hour of his deliverance to call a man blessed in his sorrow because of something to be given him surely implies a something better than what he had before true the joy that is past may have been so great that the man might well feel blessed in the merest hope of its restoration but would that be meaning enough for the word in the mouth of the Lord that the interruption of his blessedness was but temporary would hardly be fit ground for calling the man blessed in that interruption blessed is a strong word and in the mouth of Jesus means all it can mean can his saying hear mean less than blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted with a bliss well worth all the pain of the medicinal sorrow besides the benediction surely means that the man is blessed because of his condition of mourning not in spite of it his mourning is surely a part at least of the Lord's ground congratulating him is it not the present operative means whereby the consolation is growing possible in a word I do not think the Lord would be content to call a man blessed on the mere ground of his going to be restored to a former bliss by no means perfect I think he congratulated the mourners upon the grief they were enduring because he saw the excellent glory of the effort that was drawing nigh because he knew the immeasurably greater joy to which the sorrow was at once clearing the way and conducting the mourner when I say greater God forbid I should mean other I mean the same bliss divinely enlarged and divinely purified passed again through the hands of the creative perfection the Lord knew all the history of love and loss beheld throughout the universe the winged love discrowning the skeleton fear God's comfort must ever be larger than man's grief else were there gaps in his godhood mere restoration would leave a hiatus barren and growthless in the development of his children but alas what a pinched hope what miserable expectations most who call themselves the Lord's disciples derive from their notions of his teaching well may they think of death as the one thing to be right zealously avoided and forever lamented who would forsake even the windowless heart of his sorrow for the poor mean place they imagine the father's house why many of them do not even expect to know their friends there do not expect to distinguish one from another of all the holy assembly they will look in many faces but never to recognize old friends and lovers a fine saviour of men is their Jesus glorious lights they shine in the world of our sorrow holding forth a word of darkness of dismalest death is the Lord such as they believe him goodbye then good master cries the human heart I thought thou could save me but alas thou canst not if thou savest the part of our being which can sin thou letst the part that can love sink into hopeless perdition thou art not he that should come I look for another thou would destroy and not save me thy father is not my father thy god is not my god ah to whom shall we go he has not the words of eternal life this Jesus and the universe is dark as chaos oh father this thy son is good but we need a greater son than he never will thy children love thee under the shadow of this new law that they are not to love one another as thou lovest them how does that man love god of what kind is the love he bears him who is unable to believe that god loves every throb of every human heart toward another did not the lord die that we should love one another and be one with him and the father and is not the knowledge of difference essential to the deepest love can there be oneness without difference without distinction are all to have the same face then why faces at all if the planes of heaven were to be crowded with the same one face over and over forever but one moment will pass ere by monotony bliss shall have grown ghastly why not perfect spheres of featureless ivory rather than those multitudinous heads with one face or are we to start afresh with countenances all new each beautiful each lovable each a revelation of the infinite father each distinct from every other and therefore all blending toward a full revealing but never more the old dear precious faces with its whole story in each which seem at the very thought of them to draw our hearts out of our bosoms were they created only to become dear and be destroyed is it in wine only that the old is better would such a new heaven be a thing to thank God for would this be a prospect on which the son of man would congratulate the mourner or at which the mourner for the dead would count himself blessed it is a shame that such a monstrous monstrous unbelief should call for argument a heaven without human love it were inhuman and yet more and divine to desire it ought not to be desired by any being made in the image of God the Lord of life died that his father's children might grow perfect in love might love their brothers and sisters as he loved them is it to this end that they must cease to know one another to annihilate the past of our earthly embodiment would be to crush under the heel of an iron fate the very idea of tenderness human or divine we shall all doubtless be changed but in what direction to something less or to something greater to something that is less we which means degradation to something that is not we which means annihilation or to something that is more we which means a father development of the original idea of us the divine germ of us holding in it all we ever were all we ever can and must become what is it constitutes this or that man is it what he himself thinks he is assuredly not is it what his friends at any given moment think him far from it in which of his changing moods is he more himself loves any lover so little as to desire no change in the person loved know something different to bring him or her closer to the indwelling ideal in the loveliest is there not something not like her something less lovely than she some little thing in which a change would make her not less but more herself is it not the very essence of the Christian hope that we shall be changed from much bad to all good if a wife so love that she would keep every opposition every inconsistency in her husbands as yet but partially harmonious character she does not love well enough for the kingdom of heaven if it's imperfections be essential to the individuality she loves and to the repossession of her joy in it she may be sure that if he were restored to her as she would have him she would soon come to love him less perhaps not at all for no one who does not love perfection will ever keep constant in loving fault is not lovable it is only the good in which the alien fault dwells that causes it to seem capable of being loved neither is it any man's peculiarities that make him beloved it is the essential humanity underlying those peculiarities they may make him interesting and we're not offensive they may come to be loved for the sake of the man but in themselves they are of smallest account we must not however confound peculiarity with diversity diversity is in and from God peculiarity in and from man the real man is the divine idea of him the man God had in view when he began to send him forth out of thought into thinking the man he is now working to perfect by casting out what is not he and developing what is he but in God's real men that is his ideal men the diversity is infinite he does not repeat his creations every one of his children differs from every other and in every one the diversity is lovable God gives in his children an analysis of himself an analysis that will never be exhausted it is the original God idea of the individual man that will at length be given without spot or blemish into the arms of love such surely is the heart of the comfort the Lord will give those whose love is now making them mourn and their present blessedness must be the expectation of the time when the true lover shall find the restored the same as the lost with precious differences the things that were not like the true self gone or going the things that were loveliest loveliest still the restored not merely lost but more the person lost than he or she that was lost for the things which made him or her what he or she was the things that rendered lovable the things essential to the person will be more present because more developed whether or not the Lord was here thinking especially of the mourners for the dead as I think he was he surely does not limit the word of comfort to them or wish us to believe less than that his father has perfect comfort for every human grief out upon such miserable theologians as instead of receiving them into the good soil of a generous heart to bring forth truth an underfold so cut and pair the words of the Lord as to take the very life from them quenching all their glory and colour their own inability to believe and still would have the dead letter of them accepted as the comfort of a creator to the sore hearts he made in his own image here as if they were gone spies some such would tell us that the Lord proclaims the blessedness of those that mourn for their sins and of them only what mere honest man would make a promise which was all a reservation except in one unmentioned point assuredly they who mourn for their sins will be gloriously comforted but certainly such also as are bowed down with any grief the Lord would have us know that sorrow is not a part of life that it is but a wind blowing throughout it to winnow and cleanse where shall the woman go whose child is at the point of death or whom the husband of her youth has forsaken but to her father in heaven must she keep away until she knows herself sorry for her sins how should that woman care to be delivered from her sins how could she accept any comfort who believed the child of her bosom lost to her forever would the Lord have such a one be of good cheer of Mary heart because her sins were forgiven her would such a mother be a woman of whom the saviour of men might have been born if a woman forget the child she has born and nourished how shall she remember the father from whom she has herself come the Lord came to heal the broken hearted and he said blessed are the mourners hope in God mother for the deadest of thy children even for him who died in his sins thou mayest have long to wait for him but he will be found it may be thou thyself wilt one day be sent to seek him and find him rest thy hope on no excuse thy love for him neither upon any quibble theological or saccadotal hope on in him who created him and who loves him more than thou God will excuse him better than thou and his uncovenanted mercy is larger than that of his ministers shall not the father do his best to find his lost sheep the angels in his presence know the father and watch for the prodigal thou shalt be comforted there is one face of mourning for the dead which I must not leave unconsidered seeing it is the pain within pain of all our mourning the sorrow namely with its keen recurrent pangs because of things we have said or done or omitted to say or do while we accompanied with the departed the very life that would give itself to the other aches with the sense of having this time and that not given what it might we cast ourselves at their feet crying forgive me my heart's own but they are pale with distance and do not seem to hear it may be that they are longing in like agony of love after us but no better or perhaps only are more assured than we that we shall be comforted together by and by bithink thee brother sister I say bithink thee of the splendour of God and answer would he be perfect if in his restitution of all things there were no opportunity for declaring our bitter grief and shame for the past no moment in which to sob sister brother I am thy slave no room for making amends at the same time when the desired moment comes one look in the eyes may be enough and we shall know one another even as God knows us like the purposed words the prodigal in the parable it may be that the words of our confession will hardly find place heart may so speak to heart as to forget there were such things mourner hope in God and comfort where thou canst and the lord of mourners will be able to comfort thee the sooner it may be thy very severity with thyself has already moved the lord to take thy part such as mourn the loss of love such from whom the friend the brother the lover has turned away what shall I cry to them you too shall be comforted only harken whatever selfishness clouds the love that mourns the loss of love that selfishness must be taken out of it burned out of it even by pain extreme if such be needful by cause of that in thy love which was not love it may be thy loss has come anyhow because of thy love's defect thou must suffer that it may be supplied God will not like the unjust judge avenge thee to escape the cry that troubles him no crying will make him comfort thy selfishness he will not render thee incapable of loving truly he despises neither thy love though mingled with selfishness nor thy suffering that springs from both he will disentangle thy selfishness from thy love and cast it into the fire his cure for thy selfishness at once and thy suffering is to make thee love more and more truly not with the love of love but with the love of the person whose lost love thou bemoanest for the love of love is the love of thyself begin to love as God loves and thy grief will assuage but for comfort wait its time what he will do for thee only knows it may be thou wilt never know what he will do but only what he has done it was too good for thee to know save by receiving it the moment thou art capable of it thine it will be one thing is clear in regard to every trouble that the natural way with it is straight to the father's knee the father is father for his children else why did he make himself their father wouldst thou not mourner be comforted rather after the one eternal fashion the child by the father than in such poor temporary way as would but leave thee the more exposed to thy worst enemy thine own unreclaimed self an enemy who has but one good thing in him that he will always bring thee to sorrow the Lord has come to wipe away our tears he is doing it he will have it done as soon as he can and until he can he would have them flow without bitterness to which end he tells us it is a blessed thing to mourn because of the comfort on its way accept his comfort now and so prepare for the comfort at hand he is getting you ready for it but you must be a fellow worker with him or he will never have done he must have you pure in heart eager after righteousness a very child of his father in heaven end of chapter 6 chapter 7 part 1 of the hope of the gospel this Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Jordan the hope of the gospel by George McDonald chapter 7 God's Family part 1 blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God Matthew chapter 5 verses 8 6 and 9 the cry of the deepest in man has always been to see God it was the cry of Moses and the cry of Job the cry of psalmist the end of prophet and to the cry there has ever been faintly heard a far approach of coming answer in the fullness of time the sun appears with the proclamation that a certain class of men shall behold the father blessed are the pure in heart he cries for they shall see God he who saw God who sees him now be pure and you also shall see him to see God was the Lord's own eternal one happiness therefore he knew that the essential bliss of the creature is to behold the face of the creator in that face lies the mystery of a man's own nature the history of a man's own being he who can read no line of it can know neither himself nor his fellow he only who knows God a little can at all understand man the blessed in Dante's paradise ever and always read each other's thoughts in God looking to him they find their neighbour all that the creature needs to see or know all that the creature can see or know is the face of him from whom he came not seeing and knowing it he will never be at rest seeing and knowing it his existence will yet indeed be a mystery to him and an awe but no more a dismay to know that it is and that it has power neither to continue nor to cease must to any soul alive enough to appreciate the fact be merest terror save also it knows one with it the power by which it exists from the man who comes to know and feel that power in him and one with him loneliness, anxiety and fear vanish here's no more an orphan without a home a little one astray on the cold waste of a helpless consciousness father he cries hold me fast to thy creating will that I may know myself one with it know myself its outcome its willed embodiment and rejoice without trembling be this the delight of my being that thou hast willed hast loved me forth let me know that I am thy child born to obey thee does thou not justify thy deed to thyself by thy tenderness toward me does thou not justify it to thy child by revealing to him his claim on thee because of thy dispatcher thyself because of his utter dependence on thee father thou art in me else I could not be in thee could have no house for my soul to dwell in or any world in which to walk abroad these truths are I believe the very necessities of fact but a man does not therefore at any given moment necessarily know them it is absolutely necessary nonetheless to his real being that he should know these spiritual relations in which he stands to his origin yea that they should be always present and potent with him and become the heart and sphere and all pervading substance of his consciousness of which they are the ground and foundation once to have seen them is not always to see them there are times and those times many when the cares of this world with no right to any part in our thought seeing either they are unreasonable or God imperfect so blind the eyes of the soul to the radiance of the eternally true that they see it only as if it ought to be true not as if it must be true as if it might be true in the region of thought but could not be true in the region of fact our very senses filled with the things of our passing sojourn combined to cast discredit upon the existence of any world for the sake of which we are furnished with an inner eye an eternal ear but had we once seen God face to face should we not be always and forever sure of him we have had but glimpses of the father yet if we had seen God face to face but had again become impure of heart if such a fearful thought be a possible idea we should then know more believe that we had ever beheld him a sin-beclouded soul could never recall the vision whose essential verity was its only possible proof none but the pure in heart see God only the growing pure hope to see him even those who saw the Lord the express image of his person did not see God they only saw Jesus and then but the outside Jesus or a little more they were not pure in heart they saw him and did not see him they saw him with their eyes but not with those eyes which alone can see God those were not born in them yet neither the eyes of the resurrection body nor the eyes of unembodied spirits can see God only the eyes of that eternal something that is of the very essence of God the thought eyes the truth eyes the love eyes can see him it is not because we are created and he uncreated it is not because of any difference involved in that difference of all differences that we cannot see him if he pleased to take a shape and that shape were presented to us and we saw that shape we should not therefore be seeing God even if we knew it was a shape of God call it even God himself our eyes rested upon if we had been told the fact and believed the report yet if we did not see the Godness we should not be capable of recognizing him so as without the report to know the vision him we should not be seeing God we should only be seeing the tabernacle in which for the moment he dwelt in other words not seeing what in the form made it a form fit for him to take we should not be seeing a presence which could only be God to see God is to stand on the highest point created being not until we see God no partial and passing embodiment of him but the abiding presence do we stand upon our own mountaintop the height of the existence God has given us and up to which he is leading us that there we should stand is the end of our creation this truth is at the heart of everything means all kinds of completions may be uttered in many ways but language will never compass it for form will never contain it nor shall we ever see that is know God perfectly we shall indeed never absolutely know man or woman or child but we may know God as we never can know human being as we never can know ourselves we not only may but we must so know him and it never can be until we are pure in heart then shall we know him with the infinitude of an ever growing knowledge what is it then to be pure in heart I answer it is not necessary to define this purity or to have in the mind any clear form of it for even to know perfectly were that possible what purity of heart is would not be to be pure in heart how then am I to try after it can I do so without knowing what it is though you do not know any definition of purity you know enough to begin to be pure you do not know what a man is but you know how to make his acquaintance perhaps even how to gain his friendship your brain does not know what purity is your heart has some acquaintance with purity itself your brain in seeking to know what it is may even obstruct your heart in bettering its friendship with it to know what purity is a man must already be pure but he who can put the question already knows enough of purity I repeat to begin to become pure if this moment you determine to start for purity your conscience will at once tell you where to begin if you reply my conscience says nothing definite I answer you are but playing with your conscience determine and it will speak if you care to see God be pure if you will not be pure you will grow more and more impure and instead of seeing God will at length find yourself face to face with a vast inane a vast inane yet filled full of one inhabitant that devouring monster your own false self if for this neither do you care I tell you there is a power that will not have it so a love that will make you care by the consequences of God's caring you who seek purity and would have your fellow men also seek it spend not your labour on the stony ground of their intellect endeavouring to explain what purity is give their imagination the one pure man call up their conscience to witness against their own deeds urge upon them the grand resolve to be pure with the first endeavour of a soul toward her purity will begin to draw nigh calling for admittance and never will a man have to pause in the divine toil asking what next is required of him the demands of the indwelling purity will ever be in front of his slow labouring obedience if one should say alas I am shut out from this blessing I am not pure in heart never shall I see God here is another word from the same eternal heart to comfort him making his grief its own consolation for this man also there is blessing with the messenger of the father unhappy men were we if God were the God of the perfected only and not of the growing the becoming answered are they concerning the not yet pure which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled filled with righteousness they are pure they shall see God long ere the Lord appeared ever since man was on the earth nay surely from the very beginning was his spirit at work in it for righteousness he came in his own human person to fulfill all righteousness he came to his own of the same mind with himself who hungered and thirsted after righteousness they should be fulfilled of righteousness to hunger and thirst after anything implies a soul personal need a strong desire a passion for that thing those that hunger and thirst after righteousness seek with their whole nature the design of that nature nothing less will give them satisfaction that alone will set them at ease they long to be delivered from their sins to send them away to be clean and blessed by their absence in a word to become men for sin gone all the rest is good it was not in such hearts it was not in any heart that the revolting legal fiction of imputed righteousness arose righteousness itself God's righteousness rightness in their own being in heart and brain and hands is what they desire of such men was Nathaniel in whom was no guile such perhaps was Nicodemus too though he did come to Jesus by night such was Zacchaeus the temple could do nothing to deliver them but by their very futility its observances had done their work developing the desires they could not meet making the men hunger and thirst the more after genuine righteousness the Lord must bring them this bread from heaven with him the live original rightness in their hearts they must speedily become righteous with that love their friend who is at once both the root and the flower of things they would strive vigorously as well as eagerly after righteousness love is the father of righteousness it could not be and could not be hungered after but for love the Lord of righteousness himself could not live without love without the father in him every heart was created for and can live no otherwise than in and upon love eternal perfect, pure unchanging and necessitates righteousness in how many souls has not the very thought of a real God waked a longing to be different to be pure to be right the fact that this feeling is possible that a soul can become dissatisfied with itself and desire a change in itself reveals God as an essential part of its being for in itself the soul is aware that it cannot be what it would what it ought that it cannot set itself right a need has been generated in the soul for which the soul can generate no supply a presence higher than itself must have caused that need a power greater than itself must supply it for the soul knows its very need its very lack a longing greater than itself but the primal need of the human soul is yet greater than this the longing after righteousness is only one of the manifestations of it the need itself is that of existence not self-existent for the consciousness of the presence of the causing self-existent it is the man's need of God that is a human a spiritual being must either be God or one with God this truth begins to reveal itself when the man begins to feel that he cannot cast out the thing he hates cannot be the thing he loves that he hates thus that he loves thus is because God is in him but he finds he has not enough of God his awaking strength manifests itself in his sense of weakness for only strength can know itself weak the negative cannot show itself at all weakness cannot know itself weak it is a little strength that longs for more it is infant righteousness that hungers after righteousness to every soul comes this word at once rousing and consoling from the power that lives and makes him live that in his hungering and thirsting he is blessed for he shall be filled his hungering and thirsting is the divine pledge of the divine meal the more he hungers and thirsts the more blessed is he the more room is there in him to receive that which God is yet more eager to give than he to have it is the miserable emptiness that makes a man hunger and thirst and as the body so the soul hungers after what belongs to its nature a man hungers and thirsts after righteousness because his nature needs it needs it because it was made for it his soul desires its own his nature is good and desires more good therefore that he is empty of good needs discourage no one for what is emptiness but room to be filled emptiness is need of good the emptiness that desires good is itself good even if the hunger after righteousness should in part spring from a desire after self respect it is not therefore all false a man could not even be ashamed of himself without some feeling sense of the beauty of rightness by divine degrees the man will at length grow sick of himself and desire righteousness with a pure hunger just as a man longs to eat that which is good nor thinks of the strength of righteousness will be to forget even righteousness itself in the bliss of being righteous that is a child of God the thought of righteousness will vanish in the fact of righteousness when a creature is just what he is meant to be what only he is fit to be when therefore he is truly himself he never thinks what he is he is that thing why think about it it is no longer outside of him that he should contemplate or desire it end of chapter 7 part 1