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Again, I don't mind the cursing psalms, because they give the parson the power of saying: 'We say this to remind ourselves that it was what people used to feel, and which Christ came to change. I don't mind anything that is human what I can't tolerate is anything inhuman or unintelligible. No one can misunderstand the Beatitudes; very few people can follow the arguments of St. Paul!
After the resurrection, the beatitude of heaven can no longer be separated into the happiness of the soul in the Beatific Vision, and then the pleasures of the body through the glorified senses, as if there were two distinct beatitudes, or as if the soul and body were two distinct individuals.
Now, it is a wretched weakening of that great thought to suppose that it means that if A. is merciful to B., B. will be merciful to A. That is sometimes true, and sometimes it is not. It does not so very much matter whether it is true or not; that is not what Jesus Christ means. All these Beatitudes are God's gifts, and this is God's gift too. It is His mercy which the merciful man obtains.
In his dislike of the provision for grafting the Beatitudes upon the Evening Prayer, the author of the Wisconsin Report will have many sympathizers, the present writer among them; but in his fear that in the introduction of the Proem to the Song of the Three Children, as a possible respond to the First Lesson, there lurks a covert design to dethrone the Te Deum, he is likely to find few to agree with him.
The appended comparison 'as we have forgiven' does not mean that our forgiveness is the reason for God's forgiveness of us. The ground of our pardon is Christ's work, the condition of it our faith; but, as we saw in considering the Beatitudes, the condition on which the children of the kingdom can retain the blessing of the divine pardon is their imitation of it.
Even when I am advising the beatitudes of life, I am doing it from the view-point of your practical well-being. Think, then, of the incalculable advantage of having at your beck and call a friend who has proved that he knows the highways and byways of the world by having successfully found his way around among them. Think of the value of having such a guide for your daily counselor.
Hermon in the north the table-lands of Bashan Safed, the holy city, gleaming white upon a tall spur of the mountains of Lebanon a steel-blue corner of the Sea of Galilee saddle-peaked Hattin, traditional "Mount of Beatitudes" and mute witness brave fights of the Crusading host for Holy Cross these fill up the picture.
Hermon in the north the table-lands of Bashan Safed, the holy city, gleaming white upon a tall spur of the mountains of Lebanon a steel-blue corner of the Sea of Galilee saddle-peaked Hattin, traditional "Mount of Beatitudes" and mute witness brave fights of the Crusading host for Holy Cross these fill up the picture.
If the writers of our gospels bear false witness against Jesus when they represent him as "cursing the fig tree," as calling his enemies liars and devils, as calling the Gentiles dogs, as claiming equality with God, as menacing with damnation all who disagree with him, what security have we that they speak truthfully when they put the beatitudes in his mouth?
The sources of religion are those named in the Beatitudes: poverty, meekness, sorrow, hunger, ostracism; and those are all social experiences. The service of the church should be to these; and in serving the marginal people, whose life is composed of the Beatitudes, the church will serve all men. One general cause is bringing new people into the average country community.
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