[May 3.]
The heart here, the Father yonder, and the universe of man and matter as the meeting place between them, is the whole scope and the whole poetry of the Sermon on the Mount. The preacher shears off all the superfluities and externals of worship and of action, that he may show, in its naked simplicity, the communion which takes place between the heart as worshiper and God as hearer. The righteousness he inculcates must exceed that “of the Scribes and the Pharisees.” The man who hates his brother, or calls him “Raca,” is a murderer in deed.… Oaths are but big sounds; the inner feelings are better represented by “yea, yea, nay, nay.” That love which resides within will walk through the world as men walk through a gallery of pictures, loving and admiring, and expecting no return. The giving of alms must be secret. The sweetest prayer will be solitary and short. One must fast, too, as if he fasted not. The enduring treasures must be laid up within. Righteousness must be sought before, and as inclusive of all things; life is more precious than all the means of it. The examination and correction of faults must begin at home. Prayer, if issuing from the heart, is all powerful. The essence of the law and the prophets lies in doing to others as we would have others do to us. Having neglected the inner life, the majority have gone to ruin, even while following fully and devotedly external forms of faith and worship. The heart must, at the same time, be known by its fruits. It is only the good worker that shall enter the heavenly kingdom. These truths, in fine, acted upon, these precepts from the Mount, heard and kept—become a rock of absolute safety, while all beside is sand now, and sea hereafter.
Such is, in substance, this sermon. It includes unconsciously all theology and all morals, and is invested, besides, with the beauty of imagery—theology, for what do we know, or can we ever know, of God, but that he is “our Father in heaven,” that he accepts our heart worship, forgives our debts, and hears our earnest prayers—morals, for all sin lies in selfishness, all virtue lies in losing our petty identity in the great river of the species, which flows into the ocean of God; and as to imagery, how many natural objects—the salt of the sea, the lilies of the valley, the thorns of the wilderness, the trees of the field, the hairs of the head, the rocks of the mountain, and the sand of the seashore—combine to explain and beautify the deep lessons conveyed! Here is, verily, the model—long sought elsewhere in vain—of a “perfect sermon,” which ought to speak of God and of man in words and figures borrowed from that beautiful creation, which lies between, which adumbrates the former to the latter, and enables the latter to glorify at once the works and the author.—Gilfillan.[1]
[May 10.]
The Hebrew poet was nothing if not sacred. To him the poetical and the religious were almost the same. Song was the form instinctively assumed by all the higher moods of his worship. He was not surprised into religious emotion and poetry by the influence of circumstances, nor stung into it by the pressure of remorse.… Religion was with him a habitual feeling, and from the joy or the agony of that feeling poetry broke out irrepressibly. To him, the question, “Are you in a religious mood to-day?” had been as absurd as “Are you alive to-day?” for all his moods— … whether wretched as the penitence of David, or triumphant as the rapture of Isaiah—were tinged with the religious element. From God he sank, or up to him he soared. The grand theocracy around ruled all the soul and all the song of the bard. Wherever he stood, under the silent starry canopy, or in the congregation of the faithful—musing in solitary spots, or smiting, with high, hot, rebounding hand, the loud cymbal—his feeling was, “How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” In him, surrounded by sacred influences, haunted by sacred recollections, moving through a holy land, and overhung by a heavenly presence, religion became a passion, a patriotism, and a poetry. Hence the sacred song of the Hebrews stands alone, and hence we may draw the deduction that its equal we shall never see again, till again religion outshine the earth with an atmosphere as it then enshrined Palestine—till poets, not only as the organs of their personal belief, but of the general sentiment around them, have become the high priests in a vast sanctuary, where all shall be worshipers, because all is felt to be divine. How this high and solemn reference to the Supreme Intelligence and Great Whole comes forth in all the varied forms of Hebrew poetry! Is it the pastoral? The Lord is the shepherd. Is it elegy? It bewails his absence. Is it ode? It cries aloud for his return, or shouts his praise. Is it the historical ballad? It recounts his deeds. Is it the penitential psalm? Its climax is, “Against thee only have I sinned.” Is it the didactic poem? Running down through the world, like a scythed chariot, and hewing down before it all things as vanity, it clears the way to the final conclusion, “Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Is it a burden, “tossed as from a midnight mountain, by the hand of lonely seer, toward the lands of Egypt and Babylon?” It is the burden of the Lord; his the handful of devouring fire flung by the fierce prophet. Is it apologue, or emblem? God’s meaning lies in the hollow of the parable; God’s eye glares in the “terrible crystal” over the rushing wheels. Even the love-canticle seems to rise above itself, and behold! a greater than Solomon, and a fairer than his Egyptian spouse, are here. Thus, from their poetry, as from a thousand mirrors, flashes back the one awful face of their God.—Gilfillan.
[May 17.]
They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no knowledge but in a skillful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to illustrate some other knowledge, … because people by what they understand, are best led to what they understand not.