THE MOUNT
The
Sermon on the Mount is the greatest proof of the right of men to exist in the
infinite universe. It is our sufficient justification, the manifest of our
soul's worthiness, the pledge that
we can lift ourselves above ourselves to be more than men, the promise of that supreme possibility, and the hope of our rising above the
animalistic behaviors that we possess.
If an angel come down
to us from the world above should ask
us what our most precious possession is, the master-work of the Spirit at the
height of its power, we would not show him the great wonderful oiled machines
of which we foolishly boast, although they are but matter in the service of
material and unessential needs; but we would offer him the Sermon on the Mount,
and afterwards, only afterwards, a few hundred pages taken from the poets of
all the peoples. But the Sermon would be always the one shining diamond dimming
with the clear splendor of its pure light the colored poverty of emeralds and
sapphires.
And if men were called before a superhuman tribunal and had to give an
account to the judges of all the inexplicable mistakes and of the ancient
infamies every day renewed, and of the massacres which last for a thousand
years, and of all the bloodshed between brothers, and of all the tears shed by
the children of men, and of our hardness of heart and of our disloyalty only
equaled perhaps by our stupidity; we should not bring before this court the reasoning’s
of the philosophers, however learned and fine-spun; not the sciences, short-lived
systems of symbols and recipes; nor our laws, short-sighted compromises between
ferocity and fear. The only thing we should have to show as restitution for so
much evil, as atonement for our stubborn tardiness in paying our debts, as
apology for seventy centuries of hideous history, as the one and ultimate offsetting
of all those accusations, is the Sermon on the Mount. Who has read it, even
once, and has not felt at least in that brief moment while he read, a thrill of
grateful tenderness, and an ache in his throat, a passion of love and remorse,
a confused but urgent longing to act—so that those words shall not be words
alone, nor this sermon mere sounds and signs, but so that they shall be
imminent hope, life, alive in all those who live, present truth for always and
for everyone? He who has read it, if only once, and has not felt all this, he
deserves our love beyond all other men, because all the love of men can never
make up to him for what he has lost.
The
Mount on which Jesus sat the day of the sermon was certainly not as high as
that from which Satan had shown Him the Kingdoms of the earth. From it you
could see only the plain, calm under the loving sunset light; on one side the
silver-green oval of the lake, and on the other the long crest of Cannel where
Elijah overcame the servants of Baal. But from this humble mount which only
the hyperbole of the chroniclers called mountain, from this little rocky hill
scarcely rising above the level earth, Jesus disclosed that Kingdom which has
no confines or boundaries, and wrote not on tablets of stone like Jehovah, but
on flesh-and-blood hearts, the song of the new man, the hymn of glorification.
"How beautiful upon the mountains are the
feet of him that brings good tidings that publishes peace!" (Isa.
52:7) Isaiah was never more a prophet than at the moment when these words
poured from his soul speaking of the 144,000 and their message at the end of
the tribulation.
Mary
also felt the message of Jesus deserved her response in John 11:2; 12:3; Luke
7:38.
No comments:
Post a Comment