T| Science is teaching us now that at each end of the spectrum, beyond the red rays and the violet rays, there are rays of light which our eyes cannot perceive. We know perfectly well that there are notes of music too acute or too grave for our ears to apprehend them. Do they not exist, then, though the ear cannot hear them ? And so in leligious matters, even though we are regular worshippers in the Lord's house, and profess to know a great deal about Christianity, we may be as blind men walking in a gallery of pictures or — I will not say as deaf men, but — as a large number of those who go to a Beethoven concert.2
1 E. L. Hull, Sermons, i. 159.
2 W. T. Davisoii.
92 THE PURE IN HEART
2. The vision of God is possible only to the pure in heart. The word "pure" as ordinarily used, in Hebrew, in Greek, and in English, means " without alloy," " clean," " clear," " simple," "single." It is applied, in the Bible, to virgin gold, to a clean table or candlestick, to flawless glass, to unmixed oil, and to water that is only water. It does not necessarily involve a moral element. It never stands for absolute sinlessness of being. Hence it is to be taken, in the Sermon on the Mount as well as else- where, when connected with " heart," or " mind," as meaning "single," "simple," "unmixed." The "pure in heart" are those whose minds, or very selves, are single, simple, undivided and un- alloyed in one aim and purpose.
Single-mindedness, or simple-mindedness, is a characteristic of childhood. A child is all attent to one thing at a time, looking at that one thing with single eye and simpleness of mind ; while double-mindedness, or divided thinking, is the peril of the full- grown person. How many things a keen-eyed child will see in an everyday walk that are unnoticed by the father whom he accompanies ! The father has too many things in his mind, or on his mind, to observe that which, for the moment, is the all in all to the single-eyed and simple-minded — or, as the Bible would call it, the pure-hearted — child. Therefore it is that our Lord said to His maturer disciples : " Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein" (Luke xviii. 17). The pure in heart are the child-minded. They shall see God, because when they are looking for Him they are not looking for anything else. Their eyes are single, their minds are undivided, and their whole being goes out towards the object of their search. They seek for God, and they find Him when they search for Him with all their mind.
^j He returned to the Abbey, and preached his sermon on the words, " Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." The short, simple discourse contained the last words that he spoke in Westminster Abbey. By one of those strange coincidences that seem more than chance, the subject of his sermon was the blessed- ness of purity of heart and life, which those who knew him best considered to be the distinguishing quality of his character and career. " The words," he said, " may bear a twofold meaning —
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pure, disinterested love of truth, and pure and clean aversion to everything that defiles." He goes on to give three examples of the blessedness of purity in men whose hearts and writings were pure, and who not only abstained from anything which could defile the soul, but fixed their eyes intently on those simple affec- tions and those great natural objects of beauty which most surely guard the mind from corrupting influences. " And what," he asks in the words which conclude his last sermon, " is the reason that our Saviour gives for this blessedness of the pure in heart ? It is that they shall see God. What is the meaning of this connexion ? It is because, of all the obstacles which can intervene between us and an insight into the invisible and the Divine, nothing presents so coarse and thick a veil as the indulgence of the impure passions which lower our nature, and because nothing can so clear up our better thoughts, and nothing leaves our minds so open to receive the impression of what is good and high, as the single eye and pure conscience, which we may not, perhaps, be able to reach, but which is an indispensable condition of having the doors of our mind kept open and the channel of communication kept free between us and the Supreme and Eternal Fountain of all purity and of all goodness." l
TJ I hardly know whether Dean Stanley's last words will make an adequate impression upon the public. The Dean had begun on Saturday afternoons a course of sermons on the Beatitudes. In great weakness he finished the fourth sermon a little more than a week before his death, and for his text on that occasion he took two of the benedictions together, " Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." He illustrated his discourse from conspicuous monuments in the Abbey, taking sometimes one instance, and sometimes another, but I think that the Dean himself was the best instance of these two benedictions, for he was a merciful man, and as pure in heart as a little child. In some aspects of his character he was more like a little child than a full-grown man who had lived sixty-five years in the midst of this wicked world. In many aspects of its wickedness the world had never tainted his pure soul.8