Recovered In Christ

APRIL 27TH, 1873.

An Excerpt From a Sermon On The Beatitudes

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” — Matthew 5:8.

“It was a peculiarity of the great Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, that his teaching was continually aimed at the hearts of men. Other teachers had been content with outward moral reformation, but he sought the source of all the evil, that he might cleanse the spring from which all sinful thoughts, and words, and actions come. He insisted over and over again that, until the heart was pure, the life would never be clean. The memorable Sermon upon the mount, from which our text is taken, begins with the benediction, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” for Christ was dealing with men’s spirits, with their inner and spiritual nature. He did this more or less in all the Beatitudes, and this one strikes the very center of the target as he says, not “Blessed are the pure in language, or the pure in action,” much less “Blessed are the pure in ceremonies, or in raiment, or in food;” but “Blessed are the pure in heart.”

O beloved, whatever so-called “religion” may recognize as its adherent a man whose heart is impure, the religion of Jesus Christ will not do so. His message, to all men still is, “Ye must be born again;” that is to say, the inner nature must be divinely renewed, or else you cannot enter or even see that kingdom of God which Christ came to set up in this world. If your actions should appear to be pure, yet, if the motive at the back of those actions should be impure, that will nullify them all. If your language should be chaste, yet, if your heart is reveling in fowl imaginations, you stand before God not according to your words, but according to your desires; according to the set of the current of your affections, your real inward likes and dislikes, you shall be judged by him. External purity is all that man has at our hands, “for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart;” and the promises and blessings of the covenant of grace belong to those who are made pure in heart, and to none besides.

In speaking upon our text, I want to show you, first, that impurity of heart is the cause of spiritual blindness; and, secondly, that the purification of the heart admits us to a most glorious sight: “the pure in heart, shall see God.” Then I shall have to show you, in the third place, that the purification of the heart is a divine operation, which cannot be performed by ourselves, or by any human agency; but must be wrought by him who is the thrice-holy Lord God of Sabbath.

I. First, then, I have to remark that, IMPURITY OF HEART IS THE CAUSE OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS, – the cause of a very large part if not, of all of it. A man who is intoxicated cannot see clearly, his vision is often distorted or doubled; and there are other cups, besides those which intoxicate, which prevent the mental eye from having clear sight, and he who has once drunk deeply of those, cups will become spiritually blind, and others, in proportion as they imbibe the noxious draughts, will be unable, to see afar off. There are moral beauties and immoral horrors which certain men cannot see because they are impure in heart. Take, for instance, the covetous man, and you will soon see that there is no other dust that blinds so completely as gold dust. There is a trade which many regard as bad from top to bottom; but if it pays the man who is engaged in it, and he is of a grasping disposition, it will be almost impossible to convince him that it is an evil trade. You will usually find that the covetous men see no charm in generosity.

He thinks that the liberal man, if he is not actually a fool, is so near akin to one that he might very easily be mistaken for one. He himself admires that which can be most easily grasped; and the more of it that he can secure, the better is he pleased. The skinning of flints and the oppression of the poor are occupations in which he takes delight. If he has performed a dirty trick in which he has sacrificed every principle of honor, yet, if it has turned out to his own advantage, he says to himself, “That was a clever stroke;” and if he should meet with another man of his own kind, he and his fellow would chuckle over the transaction, and say how beautifully they had done it. It would be useless for me to attempt to reason with an avaricious man, to show him the beauty of liberality; and, on the other hand, I should not think of wasting my time in trying to get from him a fair opinion as to the justice of anything which he knew to be remunerative.

You know that, some years ago, there was a great fight in the United States over the question of slavery. Who were the gentlemen in England who took the side of the slave-owners? Why, mostly Liverpool men, who, did so because slavery paid them. If it had not done so, they would have, condemned it, and I daresay that those of us who condemned it, did so the more readily because it did not pay us. Men can see very clearly where there, is nothing to be lost either way; but if it comes to the a matter of gain, the heart being impure, the eyes cannot see straight. There are innumerable things that a man cannot see if he holds a sovereign over each of his eyes; he cannot even see the sun then; and if he keeps the gold over his eyes, he will become blind. The pure in heart can see; but when covetousness gets into the heart, it, makes the eye dim or blind.”