Table of Contents

• Acknowledgment
• Introduction
• The Setting
• The First Beatitude
• The Second Beatitude
• The Third Beatitude
• The Fourth Beatitude
• The Fifth Beatitude
• The Sixth Beatitude
• The Seventh Beatitude
• The Eighth Beatitude

Acknowledgment

The author acknowledges indebtedness to the teachings of
Christ Jesus
The Founder of Christianity
and of
Mary Baker Eddy
The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science

Introduction

WHEN meditating upon any statements attributed to the master Metaphysician it is always wise to consider the type of thought to which they were addressed, and also the character of the understanding by which they were recorded. Biblical data on either of these points, relative to The Sermon on the Mount, are sparse. There is reason to believe, however, that it was delivered early in Jesus’ ministerial period, and intended for his then very young students. It is also probable, however, that before the close of the discourse many others had joined the listening group.

Later on, at the end of his earthly career, the Master is reported by John to have addressed those prepared to comprehend spiritual truths in their higher meanings. But here, at the portal of his ministry, we find an address delivered to the wayfaring man whose awakening is expressed as more gentle, intelligent living, freer expansion of thought, and a dematerialization of interest. As concerns the recorder of this Sermon, we know that he was one of the twelve apostles, that he was a public official, a native of Palestine in the employ of the hated Roman government — a tax-collector. In Jesus’ day holders of such an office, however honest and upright their dealings, were generally mistrusted and not infrequently despised by the Jews. Matthew in all probability was no exception. That Jesus selected a disciple from this group evidences in itself his ability to discern spiritual values, human sense testimony notwithstanding.

Although Matthew’s vocation was a reproach among his own people, he was nevertheless a Hebrew of the Hebrews — a man well-versed in, and with a deep affection for, Old Testament tradition and prophecy. Devout in his sense of their importance, it is patent that he searched the history of Israel in an effort to justify Jesus’ mission as the Messiah.

But alas! Instead of finding his delight in spiritual unfoldment alone, he appears to have devoted much thought to tracing the conformity of the Master’s human history to Hebrew prophecy, and to have allowed this conformity largely to constitute his joy of the Christ. It is in Matthew’s gospel that we find, over and over again, such statements as “That it might be fulfilled as it was written.” No other gospel record so attempts to stress conformity to foretold human events as proof of Messiahship.

It is true, the ages owe a great debt of gratitude to Matthew as the scribe of The Sermon on the Mount, but we are not thereby obliged to limit our sense of its meaning to his concept of what was there voiced.

Happily today we have a higher criterion whereby to determine the import of the Master’s words. Although the human account comes to us through the interpretation of a hearer, we have the knowledge of the Principle which governed his spoken word, and from this knowledge are able to determine the spiritual impetus prompting it.

Jesus spake as never men spake before, because he thought as never men thought. So, while The Sermon on the Mount may have appeared to Matthew as a discourse furnishing the humble members of a conquered people with rules for hope, confidence, and more abundant living; it does not necessarily follow that such is its full import, nor that this was the point of view from which it was spoken. The record may be “According to Matthew,” but our concern is to recognize that what went on then, as now, was the Christ-presence, divine, complete, infinite Mind comprehending, and rejoicing in comprehending its own beauty, perfection, and abundance.

For him who is wedded to the oneness of Being, this sermon is the Word proceeding from that which understands that “I and my Father are one,” regardless of the words into which human interpretation may have translated it. It is from such a premise that one may enjoy the more infinite meaning of the opening verses of what may be more accurately termed Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

The Setting

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: (Matthew 5:1 link)

SEEING the multitude — being humanly aware of the belief of multiplicity of entities, and of the crowding demands of a human sense of things — its urgencies, arguments, and subtle persuasions — he arose above such a false, plural, aggressive premise: He went up into a mountain.

The theme of Oneness runs as a golden motif throughout all the warp and woof of the Scriptural fabric, and unifies that which human sense has divided into periods, localities, and persons. The importance of acknowledging oneness, and this One to be perfect, as the basis of thought and experience, cannot be over-emphasized inasmuch as the slightest departure from such a premise is an admission of duality — an admission of more than one ego, entity, or mind. From such admission springs all the fiction and subsequent friction of mortal, personal, material experience, no matter what its aspect may be.

How effortless, how all-inclusive, and how satisfying is this infinite outlook in contradistinction to starting out with many, and trying to conceive of many as one! Such a process would be attempting to infer the divine from the human and thus to be blinded to the actual indivisible nature of God. Whereas, understanding that one infinite Ego cannot express itself as plurality, reveals the fallacy of trying to call many one. Having but one Mind, and abiding in this perfect premise is understanding that the image and likeness of One cannot be multiple, but must be always about its Father’s business of evidencing oneness as the essence of reality.

So the Master arose above the suggestions of plurality, and went up into a mountain. This verifies all that has already been said regarding his standpoint. So exalted was the premise from which he voiced the Word, it appeared to the thought about him as a physical elevation.

And when he was set — fully established, consciously aware of his own divinity — his disciples came unto him. Oh the teeming import of these statements! How they emphasize the necessity of having one’s own vision clear before attempting to cast the mote from the eye of what appears as one’s brother! They expose the sad error of endeavoring to elucidate for mankind that which is not already subjectively felt as one’s own selfhood. Such wisdom forbears to speak beyond the capacity of the hearer to understand, for it is only when one has become so alive to the unfolding facts, and they have thereby become one’s ceaseless, intuitive manner of thought, that these spiritual verities may be properly voiced audibly. This vivid awareness does not go out after hearers, it does not seek an audience, for in its subjective completeness it draws all men unto it.

Herein is the Christly approach which reveals the blessedness of existence rather than accentuates any phase of evil. For if the Spirit gives utterance the first word to come forth is Blessed — even as was the case when the Master opened this remarkable address.

And he opened his mouth, and taught them saying, Blessed. (Matthew 5:2 link)

Mouth: — the human sense of a medium for speech is a perverted concept, since the directness of divine Mind obviates all mediumistic theories. In its spiritual signification however, according to John, the mouth is that from which proceeds the sword of the Spirit. However, relative thought objects to making spiritual facts instantly practical. It believes in the necessity of preparation for perfection, and hence in a conveyor between the fact and its recognition. Such an admission indicates immaturity, and consequently calls for teaching. Accordingly, to that which humanly interpreted what was going on, it appeared that he opened his mouth and taught them saying, Blessed. The divine psychology underlying this method of inaugurating an educational discourse points to the infinite wisdom and tender love which inspired its delivery.

The word here translated blessed is in the Greek makarios and in the Hebrew ashere. Both have the significance of the content of happiness, or complete satisfaction. The Oxford English Dictionary states that that which is blessed has been consecrated by sacrifice, it has been set apart by being made sacred or beloved.

According to biblical record Jesus regarded God as Spirit, and true worship as evaluating according to Spirit, not according to human standards. He said that because human appraisements have nothing in common with spiritual values, that which reasons according to sense testimony rejects and even attempts to annihilate whatever upsets its established order. Furthermore, he defined the Adversary, or mortal sense of things, as a misconception of what is actually, spiritually going on; thereby implying that an improved experience would be the result of changing nothing except the manner of conceiving. In other words that personal, material sense interpretations must be reversed in order that the spiritual facts might be seen and enjoyed.

Now Jesus, who declared his selfhood as coming forth from God — God whom to know aright is Life eternal — could not have pronounced a blessing upon spiritual penury, grief, servility, craving for righteousness, or peace-making in their commonly accepted sense; since in that sense they are one and all based upon a theory of duality.

With one God, divine Love, whose oneness is its inevitable allness, infinitely, logically, tenderly, and eternally expressing itself as the fundamental premise; in order to be consistent one is obliged to challenge every suggestion contrary to this premise. How can this be done except by reversal — by passing every so-called human experience under the rod of right identification and thereby properly classifying it, freeing it from the elements of ignorant or malicious misconceiving, and thus restoring it to its primal state of perfection?

A mere passing glance at the Beatitudes serves to disclose their step by step expansiveness. Each one in its spiritual signification hints of the one to follow. The first seven refer to enlightenment — to progressive illuminating inner experiences. They portray spiritual development — a revelation of the kingdom already within. They do not refer to human activity nor to a human sense of values, but indicate seven successive states of subjective ascendency not unlike those illustrated in the opening of the Book of Genesis, and again in the spiritual sense of the Lord’s Prayer. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. P. 16:26-15 link)

The eighth pronouncement sets forth the scientific attitude toward that which claims to have an external rise, and to be able to intrude upon the harmony of subjective being.

Spiritually understood these eight pronouncements reveal the proper light in which one’s experiences should be regarded — free from personal bitterness, condemnation, human speculation, and from any tendency to judge according to material sense testimony. This is the Christ-attitude, and there is no other way under heaven whereby misconceiving can be redeemed, and experience be seen to illustrate those divine verities which are indeed priceless, permanent, and ever one’s own.

So The Sermon on the Mount finds access to the heart of humanity not by condemnation, but by the assurance of ever-present blessedness. Showing unto man his uprightness, acquainting him with his divine essence — is this not the office of the Christ, whereby that which appears as a mortal gives up all sense of earth-weights, and forgetting those things which are, or which claim to be, behind is restored, as it were, to the dignity of sonship?

Such ascendency is accomplished by spiritual aloneness — all-oneness — and not by accepting duality and its inevitable multiplicity.

Delivered to an immature thought holding tenaciously to its mistaken concept of existence — since that was, in its penury, all that it knew — this address in its introductory affirmation gently woos the hungry, the hardened, the heart-sick from their strife.

Blessed it says, and they pause to listen. Blessed it repeats, and they stop to consider. Blessed it affirms, and they hear with rejoicing the Word of Life above the clamor of discordant sense. How else could a false sense of things be persuaded to surrender?

The remarks which immediately followed each Blessed enabled the listener to see himself more nearly as he really was. In other words they enabled him to behold the facts of being, and thus be holy.

It must have been from this standpoint that the Master spoke — reckoning God, Love, as the essence of all that is real, and following this line of light to its logical conclusion that all that can be experienced must be the experience of Love, regardless of appearances. He sanctified his universe and called it blessed. He rejoiced to behold that which he essentially was — and thus the mountain of the Lord’s house, or consciousness, is established in the very top of the mountain — in the essence of reality — and exalted above all that is called human regardless of the heavenly vestments with which a false premise may attempt to adorn its suggested presence.

The First Beatitude

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3 link)

Two well known Bible translations render poor in spirit as those who feel poor in spirit, and those who feel their spiritual need.

Human existence is somnambulistic. Hence a human sense of things must needs awaken. As this awakening takes place a personal material concept of what constitutes existence is discovered to be entirely erroneous, and when such stirring begins, life is appearing on a new basis.

To Spirit there is only the abundant fullness of spiritual good — but from the standpoint of mortality spiritual facts are but dimly seen, and only vaguely acknowledged. Their recognition is a kind of revelation of something previously considered either nonexistent, or as a far off ideal.

Because of the new point of view from which the awakened sense regards existence, it finds itself obliged to surrender its former premise. For this state of thought the acknowledgment of spiritual penury is a form of yielding, and is in itself a releasing gesture removing the tension of self-opinionated pride, and the rigidity of fear. The impetus of such a change of base is an awareness, in however small a degree, of the blessed reality of divine Love.

According to Paul’s letter to the Hebrews (11:6) the first prerequisite for coming into one’s divine heritage is to believe that God is, inasmuch as perfection can be experienced only by that which is aware of perfection. It does not, for the moment, matter how far short of perfection the awakening thought feels itself to be. Indeed, its very sense of remoteness evidences a recognition of something from which it feels remote. Here is spiritual poverty before which Jesus said the whole realm of divine reality spread — a land of joyous continuity to be freely explored and progressively experienced.

As absolute facts are discovered and acknowledged, the conceptual is released from self-imposed limitations, and more nearly illustrates the glories of infinite being. To realize that right is, to rejoice that right is, and to wait upon God in the understanding that God is All, is to experience divine right in every aspect of existence.

According to the text Jesus was addressing his disciples — a self-disciplining, self-surrendering state of thought ready for progress; which, by its very presence, evidenced the recognition of a need for that which it felt it had not. Such an attitude is not preparing for mere human improvement. In the dawn of spiritual perception the pettiness of a personal, protracted, private viewpoint suffers its own spiritual penury and fades before a clearer perception of what constitutes the realm of the real — the kingdom of heaven within.

To regard oneself as a human person earnestly striving to think God’s thoughts is to introduce a dual and personal sense of Mind-activity, whereas to know and acknowledge one Mind, admitting no other mind as existing, this infinite thought-activity is freed from personal identification and is understood to be the one Mind aware of its purity, power, and perfection.

Universality of thought means to human sense a total revolution, a total rejection of human sense testimony with its personal men and material objectivation. Such rejection is always a gain because, as a result of it, there appears the heaven of divine experience awaiting that which is awakening from the penury of material sense to the possibilities of a life more abundant.

Hence, the First Beatitude is for the poor in spirit, the awakening thought, since it is indeed ready for higher views of divine power.

The Second Beatitude

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. (Matthew 5:4 link)

MOURNING is always a sense of irretrievability. And comfort, the assurance that nothing is too hopeless, nothing too late. Mourning is actuated by self-condemnation, self-pity, regret. In spiritual awakening one learns that the only inevitability is ever-present good.

Thus the essence of the Second Beatitude is atonement — oneness — wherein one rejoices that there is nothing over which to mourn; and perceives that mourning is the effect of accepting a ghostly misconception which it is not merely his justification, but his duty to forget. Jesus cried out with a loud voice against the self-deceiving error of wearing sackcloth.

Grief comes of indulging in human, dimensional pictures, of discussing them, and thereby permitting thought to be identified with them. Suffering, in whatever form it may appear, is basically wrong identification. The most common form of wrong identification is thinking of oneself as human, surrounded by other persons. So long as one thinks of himself as a person, or as a private entity realizing Truth, he has thereby personalized the Christ. He has placed all subsequent reasoning upon the dual basis of thought transferences introducing the theory of process into his mental activity. Scientific realization does not involve process, nor include portraiture. It is, on the contrary, divine intelligence joyfully regarding and acknowledging its own character.

Reverie and imagination have no origin, no reality, no substantiality. The only possibility for them to claim to occupy thought is by considering them as having some truth. This would indicate a belief of two universes, a spiritual and a material. Divine universality of thought is infinite and precludes petty personal picturing. Furthermore it is far more here and far more now in its scope than any optimistic sense affirming mere humanly good conditions. Attractive human pictures, no matter how time-honored or personally pleasing, are at best but symbols of divine verities. They are the childish things to be put away when one comes into the understanding that the manhood and womanhood of divine reality is infinite self-awareness.

Reverie and imagination are two illegitimate daughters of a spurious mother — Personal Sense. Reluctance to give up reveries is due to fear that one is going to lose something precious and tender. The facts are that only gain can result, because what one is giving up is a personal human sense of experience: — a time-sense of past trying to rob one of something which is vividly here and now; a place-sense attempting to argue separation from something which, in its essence, one forever includes; and a personal-sense endeavoring to foist its self-deceived theory that the Ego can be divided into private entities. Such erroneous suggestions, when not encountered by fear, are entirely inane, since they have nothing to support them but the assumed credence fear is giving them.

Scientific affirmation declares the spiritual fact, not that which the human mind terms desirable. By refusing to accept the human as real one invariably finds that an improved human picture seems to be evidenced, because by thought poised in and as perfection less of the human and more of the divine is being cognized.

Mere human goodness is the loftiness of mortal belief which must be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men which must be made low, that the spiritual fact alone may be acknowledged, and the idols of Sense utterly abolished.

The belief of mourning seems to go hand in hand with the idols of sense, hence the importance of understanding that there is no mind which can think materially, sensually, objectively. Man, the image and the likeness of the one conscious Ego, must be this Ego’s activity — i.e. Mind aware of its own nature. Such mental activity is necessarily compound, inasmuch as it includes every aspect of perfection. Joy, beauty, abundance, eternality, divinity, infinity, all-inclusiveness, satisfaction, etc., constitute the spiritual ideas of which man, or God’s self-awareness, is the complete compound fullness.

Since Mind-activity cannot be hampered by beliefs of time or space, the pernicious theories of periodicity, beginnings, endings, etc., with which the human mind endows its concept of existence, are seen to be impositions. Here is the altar upon which must be sacrificed the subtle human arguments for celebrating anniversaries, remembering birthdays, and indulging nostalgia. It is not sufficient to concede the spiritual facts with such human reservation as the claim that one does not indulge in those limiting identifications for himself, but feels it necessary and kind to make such false classifications for that which appears as others. Wrong identification is never right — and right identification is not concerned with pleasing a false sense of things. It is always about the Father’s business — conforming to Principle, Love.

Personal sense, feeling the stir of Truth, makes desperate attempts to prolong its mesmerism by claiming to hold one in the bondage of personal relationships; first by pretending that one is a relative, and next that one has relatives. There is nothing relative to Being, to the “I” of one’s own innate self. Consequently relativity cannot make demands upon, nor in any way restrict, that which identifies itself with the infinite. The Christ is its own infinity and its own imperative. Accordingly, it is unspiritual to imagine there ever was a human concept about oneself or about anything. Being is divine everpresence. It holds within its infinite scope all good, without the restrictions of time, space, and person. This is the understanding which man is. It humanly appears as graciousness and poise without fluctuation or indecision.

A willingness to look beyond the human picture to the divine facts, reveals Mind as its own and only criterion. As this Christly-understanding one is the law of instant and complete annulment to false pictures, for this is the light which is the Comforter. This impersonal, universal sense experiences an over-flowing tenderness not possible to that which thinks in terms of personalities. It corrects a mistaken sense of things so that the distorted and unsatisfactory pictures fade out, and they that mourn are comforted in the understanding that mourning is the misinterpretation of the joy of abstaining from mortal sense.

The Third Beatitude

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5 link)

THE root meaning of words has great value when considering Scriptural text. Meek as employed in the Third Beatitude is praus in the Greek, meaning mild or gentle. In Hebrew the word is unah, appearing in II Samuel, Thy gentleness hath made me great.

True meekness has no taint of the commonly accepted belief that to be meek means to be tamely submissive and servile. Indeed meekness is power itself, for it is a consciousness of transcendent worth too self-contained to be aware of any need for resistance. It is in no respect inconsistent with true humility for it is humility in its most sublime aspect. There is no dignity in the universe like unto spiritual gentleness which the Master has said inherits the earth.

Meekness and divine obedience are closely allied because the essence of obedience is Principle’s effortless conformity to its own law, and meekness is the understanding experience of this conformity. Poised in oneness, its fruits are quietness and assurance forever. It never underestimates its worth, and yet its appearing is in order to minister and not in order to be ministered unto. To experience true meekness one must live subjectively.

Humanly speaking the words subjectivity and objectivity are terms employed to differentiate that which may be called one’s inner self from those experiences which appear external or personal.

Divinely speaking however, God being All, subjectivity is a mighty within-ness, an expansive self-completeness. Objectivity, on the other hand, belongs to that realm of belief in which human sense experiences its own self-imposed imaginations. Hence, mortal material so-called existence is nothing more nor less than belief fulfilling the terms of belief. Matter and mortality are thus reduced to a spurious reactionary theory — a kind of pictorial limitation accepted in belief by a supposititious believer, and experienced only from its own false premise.

Reactionary theories express themselves as opposition, resistance, retaliation, praise, blame. The ability not to be impressed by such suggestions is the key to enduring poise and singing satisfaction. No belief of matter can restrict the joyous unfoldment of reality.

It is always the admission of opposition or resistance accompanying one’s experience of an object which makes the object appear to act in a limited, destructive, or otherwise inharmonious manner. But opposition is ungodly inasmuch as it is based upon duality.

Opposition has no foot-hold in oneness. Because Christ Jesus had no duality in his concept of existence he could not have included opposition with its supposed consequences. Such dematerialization of thought indicates true meekness.

The seemingly stubborn resistance against the Christ is due to a considerable extent to pride of intellect and reasoning based upon material hypotheses. These have been the barriers which have hid spiritual facts from academic thought.

The meek, the gentle, the spiritually poised thought is endowed with dominion over all the earth. It ascends above the claims of opposition and lays up treasures in divine awareness where no concepts of moth, rust, corruption or acquisition exist.

The ghostly theory of substantiality being where it is not must be surrendered for the fact that being is spiritual, immortal, perfect, effortless. Then unreal beliefs appearing to hide the sublime beauty of divine gentleness fade away, and the quiet majesty which is unaware of anything to resist appears.

The Fourth Beatitude

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6 link)

HUNGERING and thirsting after righteousness, even in a relative sense, is something more than mere wishful thinking. Indeed it is far beyond anything that can be illustrated by human craving. It is a deep earnest longing, an evaluation which dismisses any thought of counting the cost, and willingly, gladly, unreservedly lays its earthly all aside as utterly valueless. It places first things first, and thereby worships upon the very mountain top of reality.

One of the greatest contributions toward obliterating a sense of spiritual hunger is in realizing that nothing extraneous has to be acquired by the way of knowledge or understanding. Spiritual sense is not something which satisfies a person — such a concept would be personal. Spiritual sense is satisfaction. Man is spiritual sense itself, and thereby the satisfaction. Thus is established as consciousness, the temple whose builder and maker is God. Herein is evaluation — that rising above the human dimensional picture whereby human demands more and more fade out.

The key to spiritual evaluation is acknowledging the very presence of spiritual power in all its blessedness and permanent abundance. It does not regard the omnipresence and omnipotence of God as limited in any direction of thought, but is consciously including, by acknowledgment, the here and now of its own being. In this way spiritual ideas of beauty, spontaneity, abundance, tenderness and joy are themselves satisfaction. Sometimes in connection with such human self-surrender one may be tempted to feel that this will take a very long time. That is because, without divinely scientific understanding, one presumes that it is a material person or group of persons that has to be redeemed. As a result, procrastination is accepted as necessary because of all the so-called time-demanding processes this reformation implies. So long as one thinks of himself as having to deal with persons, he is involved in the tiresome process of improving what he calls his own and other personal minds. But when he knows that it is but a wrong belief assuming to be a person or persons, it is clear that a silencing of the belief may be instant, and thereby solve the problem.

The inner awareness, the ever-alert willingness to realize ceaselessly the infinitude of divine perfection is highest worship. It is evaluating according to Spirit, and thus worshiping in the beauty of holiness.

True evaluation is the law of elimination to all false ideologies — to every theory of ethics, religion or healing which has its inception in duality. The basic errors in all false theories are mediumship, acquisitiveness, and personal perfection.

If one believes he needs a medium whereby to experience God’s presence; if he feels that this presence is acquired rather than innate; or if he assumes that it is dependent upon a personal saviour for revelation, he thereby excludes himself from impersonal ever-present Love which is God.

But to understand all such false doctrines to be erroneous systems of belief rather than groups of persons, is to see that instead of having to deal with persons who are supporters or victims of false ideologies, it is just the other way round. These spurious systems personalize themselves as exponents who, either by forced or willing consent, perpetuate the systems. If this point is clearly understood and the distinction made, false systems are placed on an impersonal basis and their elimination may be effected without suffering.

Spiritual evaluation is true worship. And when this divine sense of values melts away all false witnessing, earth will be seen as declaring the glory of God, and the heavens as showing His handiwork.

The Fifth Beatitude

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (Matthew 5:7 link)

HERE we have the blessedness of lawfulness — like producing like. This is the divine order which brooks no challenge and is unassailable.

In the Gospels there are three Greek words which have been translated merciful. The first is oiktirmon meaning pitiful or compassionate; the second hilaskomai, meaning propitious; and the third eleemon which means beneficent. It is this last-mentioned word eleemon which appears in the Fifth Beatitude. Its root is the word employed whenever an invocation for healing was made throughout the Gospel record — i.e., “Have mercy (benevolence) upon me, thou son of David.”

Under the circumstances the etymology of the word beneficent cannot very well be overlooked. Benefit is from the Latin benefactum — to do well, and beneficence, the quality of well being or being well. Mercy then is wellbeing which is expressed as being well.

Apparently it was not a humanly compassionate state of thought which was blessed by the Master, but a state of well-being. Compassion is from the Latin and means with-suffering. It has come to signify a form of sympathy or pity. But he whose conscious awareness never departed from divine presence must have been referring to something far more tender than sympathy or human compassion when he pronounced a benediction upon the merciful.

Without tenderness nothing is wholly spiritual. Tenderness, however, is not to be confused with any aspect of emotionalism. Tenderness is a radiant word infinitely more spiritual than compassion. It is true there are several gospel accounts which state that Jesus had compassion on some human picture. However, as has already been pointed out, any recorded statement about Jesus’ attitude is never his statement of how he himself regarded the situation. The records merely tell us how the event appeared to the recorder. Obviously that which appeared to human thought as compassion must in reality have been something far higher, otherwise it could not have appeared to human sense as compassion.

The tenderness of the Christ is that inner loving glow of infinite perfection which sees only its own innatancy. Was it not thus that Jesus beheld man — as the knowledge of God? And would not this correct beholding heal the false concept of man?

The mere desire to heal can never heal. It may lead to healing, but the healing is in that Christliness unaware of a need for healing. Evil, in whatever form appearing, cannot be effectually obliterated except upon the impersonal basis of its nothingness. The recognition of that which divinely and infinitely is, and thereby constitutes one’s only true selfhood, is experienced as the healing and clarifying balm of Gilead. Such beholding is simple, effortless and scientifically tender. It includes no sense of anything needing compassion, pity, healing or reformation. It is the quiet gentle awareness of divine Love, divine well-being seen to be the only presence, the only power, the only intelligence. This presence is forever unfolding itself as the only history, the only law, and the only fact. This knowing and being shines forth in such effulgence, that no human concept hinders its activity. It is not an attempt to do something, nor an effort to try to think something — it is a letting, a human self-surrender, to the point where there is no human to surrender. Of such is demonstration.

In spiritual nomenclature it is highly important that one make a distinction between demonstration and the effects in belief of demonstration. The commonly accepted sense of this word is to prove, but God is not proved by improving human existence. The proof of God is the experience of God, which experience is always spiritual, always mental, always divinely mental.

Proof is clarification. It is divine law bringing order to what appeared as chaos. This does not mean order in a physical picture, but order in and of thought, which may subsequently appear as human improvement. The tendency to think of demonstration, or the operation of divine law, in terms of material pictures received a strong rebuke from the Master when he reminded the Syro-phenician woman who came for the healing of her daughter, that it was not lawful to take the children’s meat and cast it to the dogs. In other words, that it is not lawful to employ spiritual power to prolong the belief of life and satisfaction in matter.

Evidently this Syrian mother possessed great spiritual insight for she instantly agreed to his implied human self-surrender in the one word Truth, showing thereby that she accepted the fact that Spirit is not, and cannot rightly be regarded as a medium for human improvement. In this universal, impersonal sense she must also have seen that the infinite quality of Truth includes its aloneness (all-one-ness) apparent humanly as help and comfort, for she added Nevertheless the dogs do eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. In other words, the human concept lessens with the willingness to abandon a human, personal sense of utilizing Truth and greater harmony is felt.

Herein is well-being appearing as being well, i.e. Truth aware of its own nature, knowing its own infinitude in uninterrupted beauty, blessedness, and might. The one Mind enjoys its own perfection not through, but regardless of, the suggestions that there are human persons. Upon this premise there is not a private human belief or mentality nor a person with any such belief. There is the one and only Mind expressing itself fully without a sense of personal limitations to mar its grandeur, dignity, and omnipotent presence.

The Sixth Beatitude

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8 link)

CHRIST-KNOWLEDGE in its absolute and only essence is the oneness, the purity of spiritual being which knows no duality and never can know any. It is not human philosophy which has an undeveloped Principle to be known through empirical modes, but is divine philosophy wherein Principle enjoys its own unerring operation. This spiritual aloneness must needs permit its divine premise to be its own interpreter by beholding everything in terms of Truth and by refusing to accept any personal interpretation of it. Here is highest wisdom. It subjugates error by knowing the perfection of the one and only being.

To participate in error is to prolong it, and salvation is never in partaking of the unreal. Hence, one is logically obliged to reject the suggestions of an outside, mortal, destructive and destructible world inasmuch as such theories are contrary to the oneness of Being. They are the unclean things, the unsuspected foe which argues to support duality, imperfection, the belief of something not yet attained. Such arguments have nothing to do with the oneness of perfection in which all reality lives, moves, and has its being.

The purpose of divine realization is not primarily to get human evidence. Truth is realized for Truth’s sake, without any ulterior motive. This alone can be the attitude of the pure in heart.

A dual sense of existence holds fast to God, good, as personal, and rejects the God that is Spirit, in the belief that such purity of premise is too theoretical, too intangible, too unsatisfying. But if there is a suggestion of possible loss through accepting the indivisible aloneness of one’s own true being — if there is a fear that by expanding into self-completeness one will lose anything worth while — let an illustration in mathematics clarify this misconception.

In kindergarten the child learns numbers by means of blocks or apples placed in groups on a table. Later in primary grades the cumbersome apple process is superseded by a symbolic method employing hieroglyphics termed figures. Thereby the process is shortened, the material accompaniments reduced, and the possibility of inharmony over space, possession and deterioration lessened. Now nothing is lost, and everything gained — ease, promptness, harmony, and a vastness of possibility not to be found in the apple method. Yet even this is not the ultimate. In still higher grades he learns mental arithmetic, wherein even pencil and paper with the written figure disappear. No one mourns over the absence of the pencil and paper, but rejoices in the directness, accuracy, and simplicity of the mental method. The higher means is not abstract to the mathematician, but progressively concrete.

Thus we see it is not in illusive glory, but as tangible pure-heartedness that spiritual oneness is experienced — oneness which does not mean a collectivity uniting, but One reflecting itself as All.

The word reflection, which seems frequently to be regarded as an objectivation, is defined by Webster as throwing back the original upon itself. And in this sense reflection is a subjective experience.

As a man stands before a mirror he does not actually see something in the mirror, but on the contrary he cognizes what he terms himself. So reflection is actually a mental activity wherein and whereby the one and only Ego rejoices in satisfied self-awareness.

To identify man as the one Ego’s effortless self-recognition is to see immediately that man must be the full acknowledgment, or idea of this Ego. This is completeness. It includes every right idea, or the full nature of divinity. It does not mean that man is a separate entity, or collection of entities, with ideas about God; but that he is the full, uninterrupted, infinite, joyous activity of one indivisible divine good, all-inclusive, satisfied, and pure in heart. Within God’s awareness of His own nature is every God-quality tenderly cherished and none is lost, nor can any wander from divine consciousness, since there is nothing external to the Father-Mother Mind which conceives them. Nor can this conscious awareness be invaded. The one infinite Mind in its infinite knowing is All, and includes all. Within the mesmerism of false believing there does appear to be an external something cognizing both good and evil, and this appearing claims to express itself as persons. But to admit the mesmerism, and the supposed process of the mesmerism, constitutes the mesmeric experience.

The question may here suggest itself — Is this subjective premise practical? But one should let no mortal postulation, no erring human opinion, thrust itself before his thought to trouble his heart with arguments that the vision glorious is too transcendental, too impractical, too remote! The Master assured his students of the wisdom and fitness of recognizing spiritual all-inclusive oneness in the words: Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me. And he amplified the meaning of this Me in the statement “I and my Father are one.”. He further declared that one could come unto the essence of all things only by this Me. Human existence having no real entity but merely claiming to be I or Ego; divine intelligence, infinite Love must be acknowledged to be the only entity, the only Ego alone and without even the claim of an equal.

In the sacred aloneness of divine contemplation the nature of all things is recognized as spiritual, and this divinely mental nature to be expressing itself as verities. Here Principle’s reign is the activity of Mind. This Immanuel, or God with Us, is Love experiencing itself as Love. Its glory cannot be shared with human dimensional pictures, for to dwell in and as this light is to see only the radiance of spiritual glory wherein are no concepts of corporeality. No empirical modes of human reasoning reveal the Christ, but rather is it their self-surrender, and the pure heart which apprehends God.

The Seventh Beatitude

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Matthew 5:9 link)

Perhaps we have been prone to think peacemakers as those who bring about reconciliations between persons and groups. But is this not a very personal and limited sense of peace-making? That which makes peace through the Son, through the consciousness of God, is the spiritual realization of God’s presence, power, and perfection, wherein nothing exists either as accuser or accused.

Belief always suggests itself either as he is wrong or I am wrong. By removing the he is wrong argument one does not get rid of the suggestion, since that which thinks of itself as person never yet got rid of any belief; personal sense being the author of all misconceiving.

The answer to personal sense and its suggested divisions is Love — Love undivided and all-inclusive. The acknowledgment of the subjective Christ makes it possible to silence the belief that there are any divisions. There are no private human minds with which to absorb spiritual facts or to create evil. There is nothing objective at all to reality.

The busy-ness of mortal, material, personal thinking is to add, subtract, multiply, and divide; but the office of the Christ is to be one — even as “I and my Father are one.”.

All is divinely subjective, and this subjectivity does not objectify itself. Its blessings are the subjective states of progressive unfoldment. It does away with an admission of an outside universe which needs to be improved, or with which one’s relations need to be improved. Mind understands itself infinitely, without measurement or comparison; and the Christ office is always in beholding (being wholly) the perfect concept, and not in taking in perverted pictures. Humanly this may appear as loving-kindness or helpfulness.

The final characterization of divine selfhood in the Scriptures is by womanhood, indicating that divine selfhood includes within its fullness manhood as well. Peacemaking is closely allied to womanhood because it is that mother quality which cognizes no mistakes. All the harmony of being is in true womanhood — in the Love which knows no accuser and no accused. The realization of God’s presence and power as Love removes the propensity to accuse, and any sense of satisfaction from it. Thereby the accused is freed from his sense of being accused, and gains a clearer understanding of Love wherein is no accusation.

Thus true manhood-womanhood brings forth, in the realization of its indivisibility, the man-child termed by St. John the Word — the Logos or logic which was with God, and which was God.

The mission of the man-child is to be our peace — peace in God through the knowledge of God. Paul says:

He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us . . . for to make in him of twain one new man, so making peace. (Ephesians 2:14-15 link)

The Eighth Beatitude

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:10 link)

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. (Matthew 5:11 link)

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. (Matthew 5:12 link)

THERE are three progressive steps presented by this closing Beatitude, pronounced upon the dioko, pursued, or persecuted. The first is for that state of thought more conscientious than conscious; the second for that which, in its consciousness of the divine “I” rises above a sense of persecution; and lastly for the vision which rejoices to behold One as All.

Because Jesus employed the third person plural pronoun in the foregoing seven, and the first pronouncement of the Eighth Beatitude, it would indicate that he did not regard himself as including that which thought of itself as suffering, or as persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Any concept which provided for a they was foreign to his identification of himself and his universe. At the close of his earthly ministry we find even the ye becoming I, but here in his inaugural address, to accommodate his remarks to the thought of his listeners, he employs ye and you as indicative of his universal sense of himself.

So the Eighth Beatitude opens with a blessing for they who suffer from a zeal for right untempered by spiritual poise — since that which thus suffers admits the possibility of evil. Herein is the persecution inasmuch as any admission of an external, opposing, resisting, accusing or accused force is relentlessly pursued by itself. Perpetuity being an aspect of reality, material sense reverses and reproduces it as a frantic, tenacious effort to keep itself going; even to the point of prolonging its own misery under the name of purification. Happily all misconceiving contains within itself the issues of its own demise.

Persecution is not primarily due to what has been humanly done or left undone; but is because one has regarded himself as participating in a mortal, material, personal existence. This is the basic evil. If the possibility of eliminating unhappy experiences was only for that which is humanly innocent, then none but the humanly good would have hope. To regard good as personal is to indulge in either self-justification or self-condemnation; neither of which has any relation to the good which is God. Jesus said: Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.

Divine sonship is not due to human innocence but to the fact that one knows God and thereby is not human. Jesus never identified himself with error of any kind, neither as the condemned nor the condemning, the accused nor the accuser. He knew that in his one and only selfhood there was nothing ignorant nor malicious. This all-inclusive Christly love enabled him to experience his own freedom, and to assure his disciples that that which appeared tormented by a zeal for right, in surrendering a human sense of self, would experience peace. Personal Sense is never a factor in spiritual realization; and that which is consecrated by the sacrifice of a human sense of self, has recourse to the realm of the real wherein is no sense of persecution, either for good or for evil.

The ability to wipe out a sense of personal guilt or personal innocence is the gift of God. It is the free gift demanding no penalties, since within its egoistical tender Allness a need for penalties is unknown. All that is required is the surrender of a wholly useless, tormenting and entirely fictitious concept of reality. Herein is the Love of God manifest as the Christ — appointed to declare the loving strifeless nature of the Father-Mother, God.

The second benediction of the Eighth Beatitude is addressed by Jesus to his immediate students, to the ye that is pursued for the sake of the I.

A zeal for right, because of its dual premise, involves a battle, whereas that which can wait upon God in the understanding that God is All, knows no conflict. Its non-resisting, non-retaliating attitude, poised in the continuity of true Being, knows only the might of effortless dominion.

To be reviled, slandered, falsely represented, because of the great distance which exists between the divine and human premise, is not grievous since such persecution touches only that which one is not. He alone knows painless progress who refuses to permit suggestion to identify him with a struggle or a need for a struggle. It is a soaring sureness, a joyous winging, surpassing all human understanding. It is the Sun of righteousness arising with healing in its wings.

There is no relative approach for that which acknowledges the Christ to be the knowledge of God. The world’s approval or disapproval is of little moment. Loving from the infinitude of divine reality, only perfection is known. Such advancing unfoldment may be labeled by the world transcendental, but this persecution is fatal only to the persecutor inasmuch as it hides from him the divine ever-presence of Love. The Master charged his students that their sense of righteousness should exceed that of the scribe and Pharisaical variety. They were to look up, and lift up their heads, for Lo, the kingdom of God is within you.

Permitting the kingdom, the power, and the glory of one’s own Christ-being to reign is a great ever-expanding withinness which is its own singing satisfaction and fragrant fulfilment. It is in this manner of purification through right identification that all advanced or prophetic thought is pursued. Its domain is the consciousness of reality, its power the might of true meekness, and its glory the poise of Soul.

Gone the penury of vision!
Let light be because it is!
Mourn not over incompleteness
But be comforted in this
That true meekness is dominion,
Yea, the dignity of Soul;
And that longing for completeness
Is assurance Thou art whole.

Let the mercy of well-being
Be the law to being well.
This high purity of outlook
Will reveal Immanuel.

Making-peace thus is unfolding
As the presence of God’s grace
Breaking down the sad illusions
Of division, time, and space.

Think not of thyself as righteous,
Save that Self to thee be Love,
For the One alone is perfect
Which knows nought beyond, above.

No accuser nor accusing
Can dethrone thy Christliness,
Since forever they are cancelled
By the joy of consciousness.
Thus the sureness of thy rereward
Is the magnitude and love
Of the Father-Mother, Spirit,
All-inclusive, ever One