Sermon on Mount – Part 3 – Sermon O.

The Sermon on the Mount, Chapter 3. As a man thinketh, ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thencefore 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. Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 through 16. In this wonderful passage, Jesus is addressing those who have awakened to the understanding of material bondage and have acquired some spiritual understanding of the nature of being. That is to say, he is addressing those who understand the meaning of the allness of God or good, and the powerlessness of evil in the face of truth. Such people he describes as being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. And indeed that is not too much to claim for those who understand the truth and who really live the life that corresponds to it. It is possible, and in the fact only too easy, to accept these vital principles as being true, to love the beauty in them, and yet not put them consistently into practice in one's own life. But this is a perilous attitude, for in that case the salt has lost its savor, and is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot. If you understand and accept the teachings of Jesus, and if you make every effort to practice them in every department of your daily life, if you seek systematically to destroy in yourself everything which you know should not be there, things such as selfishness, pride, vanity, sensuality, self-righteousness, jealousy, self pity, resentment, condemnation, and so forth, not feeding or nourishing them by giving into them, but starving them to death by refusing them expression. If you extend the right thought loyally to every personal thing within your kin, especially to the people or things you dislike, then you are worthy to be called the salt of the earth. If you truly live this life, then it does not in the least matter what your present circumstances may be, or what difficulties you may have to struggle against. You will triumph over them all. You will make your own demonstration, and not only will you make your own demonstration in the quickest possible time, but you will be, and in a very positive and literal sense, a healing and illumining influence on all around you, and a blessing to the whole human race. You will be a blessing to men and women in remote places, and at times. Men and women of whom you have never heard of, and who will never hear of you. A light of the world, in fact. Startling and wonderful as that may sound. The state of your soul is always expressed in your outer conditions, and in the intangible influence which you radiate at large. There is a cosmic law that nothing can permanently deny its own nature. Emerson said, What you are shouts so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. In the Bible, the city always stands for consciousness, and the hill or mountain always means prayer or spiritual activity. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. The soul that is built upon prayer cannot be hidden. It shines out brightly through the life that it lives. It speaks for itself, but in utter silence, and does much of its best work unconsciously. Its mere presence heals and blesses all around it without special effort. Never try to force other people to accept spiritual truth. Instead, see to it that they are so favorably impressed by your own life and conduct, and by the peace and joy that radiate from you, that they will come running to you of their own accord, begging you to give them the wonderful thing that you have. I, the Christ-truth, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. To do this is to make your soul truly the city upon a hill that cannot be hidden, because it is the golden city, the city of God. This is to let your light shine to the glorifying of your Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, or one jot, or One tittle, shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whatsoever 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 call great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I say unto you, that except for righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven matthew chapter 5 verses 17 through 20 true christianity is an entirely positive influence it comes into a man's life to enlarge and enrich it to make it fuller and wider and better never to restrict it you cannot lose anything that is worth having through acquiring a knowledge of truth Sacrifice there has to be, but it is only sacrifice of the things that one is much happier without, never of anything that is really worth having. Many people have the idea that getting a better knowledge of God will mean giving up things that they will regret losing. A girl once said, I mean to take up religion later on when I am older, but I want to enjoy myself for a while first. This, however, is to miss the whole point. The thing one has to sacrifice are selfishness, fear, and a belief in necessary limitation of any kind. Above all, one has to sacrifice the belief that there is any power or endurance in evil apart from the power that we ourselves give it by believing in it. Drawing near to God would not have caused this girl to lose any enjoyment, but rather she would have gained immeasurably in happiness. It is quite true that as her consciousness changed, she would Have probably found that certain forms of pleasure-hunting, no longer attracted her. This would probably have happened, but there would have been ample compensation in the new light that would be thrown upon every phase of her life, and in the wonderful new aspects that the world would begin to wear for her. It is only things not worth having that would disappear under the action of truth. If, on the other hand, anyone were so insane as to suppose that the knowledge of the truth of being could put him above the moral law in the sense of authorizing him to break it, he would speedily discover that he had made a tragic mistake. The more spiritual knowledge that one possesses, the more severe is the punishment which he brings upon himself by any infraction of the moral law. The Christian cannot afford to be less careful than others in observing the whole moral code in every nook and cranny of his life. He has, on the contrary, to be very much more careful than other people. Indeed, all real spiritual understanding must necessarily be accompanied by definite moral improvement. A theoretical acceptance of the letter of truth might go with moral carelessness, greatly to the peril of the delinquent, but it is utterly impossible to make any real spiritual progress until you honestly try your very best to live the life. It is utterly impossible to divorce true spiritual knowledge from right conduct. A jot, the Greek iota, means yod, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The tittle, really little horn, is one of those tiny spurs or projections that distinguish one Hebrew letter from another. The thought is that not only the letter of the moral law is to be kept, but the minutest detail of the letter. We have to exemplify not merely common morality, butthe highest standards of honor. The scribes and the Pharisees, in spite of their defects, were for the most part worthy men leading strictly moral lives according to their lights. Unfortunately, they had only the letter of the law, but that letter they usually kept in its entirety, rigorously doing their duty as they saw it. Their faults were the fatal weaknesses of the religious formalists everywhere—spiritual pride, and self-righteousness. Of these faults they were sublimely unconscious. That is the deadly malice of these diseases of the soul, and they did strive to fulfill the law as they understood it. Jesus knew this, and he gave them credit for it. And here he warns his followers that unless their practical conduct is in every respect as good as, and even better than, that of these people, they need not suppose that they are making any spiritual headway. Spiritual attainment and the highest standards of conduct must go hand in hand. Unless both are there, neither is there. As you grow in true spiritual power and understanding, you will actually find that many outer rules and regulations will become unnecessary. But this will be because you have really risen above them, never, never because you have fallen below them. This point in your development where your understanding of truth enables you to dispense with certain outer prompts and regulations is the spiritual coming of age. When you really are no longer spiritually a minor, you will cease to need some of the outer observances that formerly seemed indispensable. But your resulting life will be purer, truer, freer, and less selfish than it was before. And that is the test. To give a simple illustration, some people find that at a certain stage of their progress, their mental processes become so orderly and clarified that with a little treatment they can go through the day's work, keep all their appointments, and discharge all their duties without bothering to consult the clock or needing to carry a watch. Now it has sometimes happened that one of their friends, knowing about this and desiring to emulate them, has taken the simple step of leaving his watch at home and ignoring the clock, with the result that he is late for all of his appointments, thus upsetting his own day's work and that of other people too, whose convenience he did not trouble to study. When the student is spiritually ready to dispense with his watch, he will find himself doing the right thing at the right time without thinking about a watch at all. Whereas, when he has to make a special arrangement to discard his watch and then finds himself late for engagements, it is proof that he is not yet ready to demonstrate in that particular. The proper course for such a person is to carry a watch, work to a timetable, and devote his treatments to things that really matter, such as healing himself and others, overcoming sin, working for understanding and wisdom, and so on. So it is with the larger issues of life this spiritual coming of age cannot be hurried or forced, but must appear in its own good time when the consciousness is ready, exactly as the flowering of the bulb can only be the result of natural growth. You have to demonstrate where you are. Let this be for the frontlets between your eyes, and write it upon the doorposts of your heart. You have to demonstrate Where you are To seek to demonstrate beyond your understanding is not spiritual. Spiritual development is a matter of growth, and he that believeth shall not unwisely make haste. Fix your attention wholeheartedly upon the spiritual things, and meanwhile do all that needs to be done in the ordinary way. And without consciously trying to make haste, you will be amazed to discover the pace at which your soul has hastened. To take a simple example, suppose that in a street accident you find that a man has severed and artery, and the blood is spurting out. The normal course of things is that unless this bleeding is stopped, the victim will die within a few minutes. Now what is the spiritual attitude to take in such a case? Well, it is perfectly simple. Immediately you perceive what has happened. You must turn the other cheek by knowing the truth of the omnipresence of God. If you get this clear enough, as Jesus would, for instance, the severed artery will immediately be healed and there will be nothing more to be done. It is exceedingly unlikely, however, that you will get your realization clear enough for this, and so, demonstrating where you are, you must take the usual steps to save the man's life by immediately improvising a tourniquet or whatever the proper procedure may be. Or again, suppose that a child falls into a canal when you are passing by. Once more, the appropriate action will be to speak the word and once more, if you have sufficient spiritual power, that child will immediately be seen in safety. But if not, then demonstrating where you are, you must proceed to rescue him in whatever is the best way, diving in if that should be necessary, and treating as you act. But what of the man who is conscious of considerable moral imperfection, perhaps of the habit of grave sin, and is at the same time sincerely desirous of spiritual growth. Is he to relinquish the quest for spiritual knowledge until he has first reformed his conduct? By no means. As a matter of fact, any attempt to improve himself morally without spiritual growth is foredoomed to failure. No more can a man, to use Lincoln's phrase, raise himself off the ground by pulling on his own bootstraps than the sinner can reform himself by his own personal efforts. The only result of relying upon himself in such cases, will be repeated failure, consequent discouragement, and probably ultimate despair of doing any good. The one thing for such a person to do is pray regularly, especially at the actual time of temptation, and to throw the responsibility for success upon God. He must carry on in this way, no matter how many times he may fail. And if he continues to pray, and especially if he prays in the scientific way, he will, as a matter of fact, very soon find that the power of evil has been broken, and that he is free from the particular sin. To pray scientifically is to keep affirming that God is helping him, that the temptation has no power against him, and consequently to claim that his own real nature is spiritual and perfect. This is ever so much more powerful than merely to invoke the help of God. In this way, the moral regeneration and spiritual unfoldment will go hand in hand. The Christian life does not require that we possess perfection of character, or else which of us would be able to live it? What it does require is honest, genuine striving for that perfection. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, that thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto you, that whosover is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raka shall be in danger of the council. But whoso ever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger or hell fire. Therefore if you 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 by thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Matthew chapter 5 verses 21 through 24. The old law dealing as it did with an earlier and lower state of race consciousness concerned itself necessarily with external things, for man's apparent evolution is from the outer to the inner, just as his fundamental spiritual growth is from the inner to the outer. He begins by giving his attention exclusively to externals, thinking to find in them cause as well as effect. But as he progresses the truth gradually dawns upon him that outer things are but the finished article the result of causes and happenings on the inner, and when he has reached this stage he has started definitely upon the search for God. So the all law concerned itself, at least in the letter, almost altogether with external observances, and it was satisfied if these were fulfilled. It said, Thou shalt not kill. And provided a man did no murder, he kept the law regardless of how much he may have desired to commit murder or how bitterly he might still hate his enemy. It says, Th thou shalt nicht stehle. And providing he did not appropriate his neighbor's property, he was held to have fulfilled the law irrespective of what he felt about it. Jesus came to carry the human race forward to the next great step, the most important step of all, which can indeed be the final step in overcoming of all our limitations, if only we can understand clearly what that step implies and take it. The heart of the whole Sermon on the Mount, which is itself an essence of the Christian message, is the insistence upon the need for this very step, the understanding that outer conformity, absolutely essential as it is, is no longer sufficient in itself, but that now, if we are to come of age spiritually, we have not merely to conform outwardly to the outer rules, but to change the inner man too. The old law said thou shalt not kill, but Jesus said that even if you want to kill, nay, even to be angry with your brother is sufficient to keep you out of the kingdom of heaven, as of course it is. It was a distinct gain when primitive barbarous people could be persuaded not to murder those who had offended them, but to develop sufficient self-control to master their anger. Spiritual demonstration demands that anger itself be overcome. It is simply not possible to get any experience of God worth talking about or to exercise very much spiritual power in the way of healing unless and until you have got rid of resentment and condemnation concerning your brother man. Until you are prepared to get rid of this sort of thing, your prayers will have very little effect. It may boldly be said that in prayer the more love the more power, and this is why people of developed spiritual perfection take such constant pains to keep themselves free from thoughts of criticism and condemnación. They know that they can have either their demonstration or their indignation, but that they cannot have both, and so they do not waste time in trying to. Indignation. Resentment. The desire to punish other people or to see them punished. The desire to get even. The feeling it serves him right. All these form a barrier to spiritual power or progress. Jesus dramatizing the thing in the oriental way, says that if you are bringing a gift to the altar and you remember that your brother has anything against you, you must put down your gift without attempting to offer it and go away and first make peace with your brother. And then when you have done that your offer will be acceptable. It was the custom as we all know to take gifts of various kinds to the temple, from bulls and cows down to doves and offerings of incense or where it might be more convenient an equivalent offering of money to the value of these things. Now under the new law or Christian dispensation our altar is our own consciousness and our offerings are the prayers and treatments. Our burnt sacrifices are the air thoughts which we destroy or burn away in spiritual treatment. And so Jesus says that if, when we are about to pray, we remember that we have any wrong thoughts or hard feelings about our brother man, no matter who he may be, and irrespective of whether the object of our hostile thought be an individual or a body of people, we must pause there and treat ourselves until we have got rid of this sense of hostility, and have once more restored the seamless garment of our spiritual integrity. Jesus builds up this tremendous lesson again in the Oriental tradition by employing a series of steps, three in this case. He says first that whoever is angry at his brother, shall be in danger. Secondly, that to be really and seriously, one may say vindictively hostile to another, is to be in grave danger. And finally, that to hold so low an opinion about a fellow creature as to allow ourselves to consider him to be outside the pale, so to speak, is to shut ourselves off from any hope of spiritual fruit while we remain in this state of mind. To call a man a fool in this sense means that we consider that no good is to be expected from him, which is to deny the indwelling Christ in him, and to do this is to bring very serious consequences upon ourselves. Note carefully that the authorized or King Jane version of the Bible, which is by far the best all-around addition for spiritual purposes, here makes a serious error, which has been corrected in the revised version. It makes Jesus say, Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, which ist a manifest absurdity, no sane person gets angry without what he deems to be a cause. However trifling or irrelevant the cause that he assigns may be. What Jesus said, of course, was that whosoever is angry with his brother under any circumstances is in danger. Agree with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art in a way with him, lest at any time the adversary 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. Matthew chapter 5 verses 25 and 26 This paragraph is of the utmost practical importance. Jesus is stressing here the instruction contained in his injunction to watch and pray. It is ever so much easier to overcome a difficulty if you tackle it immediately, at its first appearance, than it will be after the trouble has had some little time to establish itself in your mentality. To dig itself in, as the soldiers say. Soldiers know that as long as troops are marching across open ground, it is not hard for the enemy to scatter and destroy them. But once let them dig into the ground and entrench themselves, and they become exceedingly difficult to remove. So it is with evil. The moment it presents itself to your attention, you should immediately turn it out. Repudiate it. Refuse to accept it. And by quietly affirming the truth, give it no chance to dig itself in. If you do this, you will find that it will have little or no power over you. This procedure will involve a tussle, and it may appear for a little while that the enemy is gaining ground. But provided you have tackled him in the very beginning, he will presently disappear and you will be left victorious. On the other hand, by accepting the error and by thinking about it, you are incorporating it into your mentality. And if you go on doing this for long enough, it may be exceedingly difficult to get rid of. Most of us realize this is our cost. We find it comparatively easy, once we have learned to pray scientifically, to overcome new difficulties as they present themselves, but the older ones whose positions we have fortified by long acceptance are difficult to dislodge. Jesus, in according with his usual custom, when he wished to drive home a particularly important point, employed a graphic illustration from the everyday life of the people around him. In those times the law governing debtors was extremely severe. When a man found himself in debt it strongly behooved him to come to terms with his creditor by any acceptable means and as quickly as possible. Even at the present day it is highly important for the debtor to keep his case from coming into court, if possible. Because there are such things as costs. These are added to the original debt, and the longer the case drags on, the more do lawyers' fees, court dues, and expenses of various kinds accumulate, all piled on top of the debt proper. Indeed, cases are cited where the cost involved in legal proceedings actually exceeded the original debt itself. So it is with the various difficulties that present themselves to us in our daily lives. The original difficulty, as it first appeared, usually becomes multiplied many times by our wrong thoughts concerning it and we do not go free until the whole debt is cleared. By coming to terms with the adversary in the first place That is to say, by getting our thought right immediately concerning the difficulty, we incur no cost and the transaction remains a simple one. Let us suppose that you find yourself sneezing. If you say, there now, I have caught a cold again, now I am in for it, and then proceed as people so often do to dwell upon the thought that you have caught the cold, and on a various inconveniences that will probably follow upon that, you are giving the trouble the opportunity to dig itself into your mentality. People often go on from this to indulge in quite a meditation upon sickness in general, and colds in particular. They will think over the previous few days to discover when they caught the cold, and they will probably decide with considerable satisfaction that it must be due to that open window on Tuesday or to sitting on Wednesday in the company of a friend who already had a cold, and so forth. Then perhaps they go on to think over several so-called remedies which, however, they have found in the past to be useless. Very frequently they will actually speculate as to how long the coming cold will probably last, usually appointing some definite time such as ten days or two weeks, which for some reason or other they suppose to be a natural duration of a cold. In certain cases, they even go beyond this, having built up a habit of associating certain secondary ailments with the cold proper, such as bronchitis, temporary deafness, stomach trouble, or whatnot. Now we have seen that this is a very way in which to produce all these things, and therefore it follows as a natural consequence that in due order they put in their appearance as per schedule. If such a person had some general knowledge of truth, he will after thinking this way for some time begin to treat himself spiritually as best he can. But by this time he will have amplified the air so strongly, will have allowed it to dig itself in, that the handling of his cold will be really quite a difficult business. If upon the air first presenting itself in his consciousness, if that is to say at the first moment that the possibility of catching cold occurred to him, either through sneezing or feeling chilly, he had immediately rejected it, claimed his dominion and affirmed the truth, that would probably have been the last of the matter, or at least the whole thing would have been over in a few hours. Precisely the same rule applies to any other form of error thought. Business or family difficulties should be handled in exactly the same way. Let us suppose that upon opening your morning mail you find bad news concerning business affairs. It may be that you find a notice informing you that the bank in which most or all of your money is deposited has failed. Again, the usual thing in such cases is to accept the worst and to dwell upon it almost any length. Many people, in such a case, would quite saturate themselves with the thought of ruin by thinking it over all day long and probably all night long too, and by discussing it in all its details with other people and rehearsing every kind of trouble and difficulty that might come to them as a result of the occurrence. In addition to all this, there would in many cases be better resentment and condemnation towards the people, bank officials, and so on, who would be held to be responsible. Now even a very slight knowledge of the causative power of our thoughts will show us that what the result of all this must inevitably be. It must be to increase and multiply the trouble, and make it more and more difficult to escape from. Once more in such a case, a student of the Jesus Christ teaching would sooner or later start to drive all such thoughts out of his mentality. substituting for them his knowledge of true law of being. It may be, however, that having been taken off his guard by the suddenness and seriousness of the blow, it will be some time before he begins to handle the problem in the light of truth, and it is this delay that will increase his difficulty many times. The proper thing to do according to Jesus is immediately become aware of the bad news, to turn to God, his real support, to refuse to accept the suggestion of trouble as binding upon him, and literally to drive the thought of loss and danger right out of his consciousness, together with the fear and the resentment that go with it. If he does this, working steadily until his peace of mind is restored, he will presently find himself safely out of his difficulty. In some way or other, the trouble will disappear and his fortunes will be restored. Either the bank will speedily recover itself, and there is no reason at all why one person's prayer should not save the bank and the fortunes of thousands, or if this for any reason is not possible, he will find that a sum of money equal to or greater than the one he lost in the bank, will come to him from some other and probably quite unexpected direction. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The same principle would, of course, apply equally to any kind of difficulty whatever, since universal harmony is the true law of being. A dispute or quarrel or misunderstanding should be handled in the same way from the first moment you become aware of it. 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. Matthew chapter 5 verses 27 and 28 In this unforgettable paragraph, Jesus stresses the master truth, so utterly fundamental, yet so unsuspected by the world at large, that what really matters is thought. People have always been accustomed to suppose that as long as their deeds conform to the law, they have done all that can be reasonably expected of them, and that their thoughts and feelings are of little importance, andthat in any case these are their own business exclusively. But we know now that any outward act is but the sequel to a thought, and that the type of thought which we allow to become habitual will sooner or later find expression on the plane of action. We understand now in the light of scientific Christianity that thoughts literally are our things, andthat our choice of conduct really lies in our choice of the kind of thought that we permit to occupy the stage of our mind. In other words, we have discovered that a wrong thought is just as destructive an act as a wrong deed. The logical sequence of this undoubted fact is very startling. It means that if you entertain covetous thoughts for your neighbor's money, you are a thief at heart, even though you may not yet have put your hand in the till. And if you continue to entertain such thoughts, it is only a question of time before you will rob him. If you willingly nourish hatred, you are an murderer at heart. Even though your hands have not moved to kill, the adulterer at heart is corrupting his soul, even though his impure thought is never expressed on the physical plane. Lust, jealousy, vengeance, mentally entertained carry the soul's consent and this soul consent is the malice of sin whether the corresponding outer acts be yet materialized or not. Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.