3. It is not enough to be clean outside. In our Lord's days much attention was paid by religious people to external purity. They had many ceremonies of washing. They washed nearly
1 R. E. Prothero, Life of Dean Stanley, ii. 5C7.
2 Bishop Preiser's Lancashire Life, 257.
94 THE PURE IN HEART
everything they used — not to make it clean, but to make it holy. They were quick to condemn any one who failed to observe all the rules for outward cleansing. Yet Jesus reproved them for their insincerity, for while they made clean the outside of the cup and the platter, within they were full of extortion and excess. He said they were like whited sepulchres, which appeared beautiful without, but within were full of dead men's bones and all unclean- ness. It is not enough to have a fair exterior; the heart must be pure. It is in the heart that God would live. The heart, too, ia the centre of the life. If the heart be not holy, the life cannot be holy.
Tf " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." There is no fault in our Authorized Version in this passage, but the words " pure in heart " should be rendered in modern English, " clear in their affections." These are the truly simple, who read Dante's Ben del Intelletto — the vision of the Godhead. To be truly pure in heart is to search for one's main duty and to set oneself to do it, subordinating to this life-task all other desires and all distractions of a more or less material kind.1
Bernard made signal to me with a smile To look above; but of myself had I Anticipated his desire the while ;
For now my vision, clearer than before, Within that Beam of perfect Purity And perfect Truth was entering more and more.
From this time forward that which filled my sight Became too lofty for our mortal strains; And memory fails to take so vast a flight.2
f| In the Middle Ages, and sometimes since, men who desired earnestly to see the vision of God strove to attain it by asceticism — that is, by a sort of forced, mechanical purity. The mechanism, we believe, failed, for it was not appointed of God, but was a clumsy contrivance of men. Yet the attempt showed a recogni- tion, however perverse, of the truth which Christ puts here so beautifully and simply. The same truth inspired the chivalrous legend of the Holy Grail. Many brave and worthy knights addressed themselves to the quest of the Sangreal, yearning to see the vision of the chalice that brimmed red with the very blood of God Incarnate, and to win the mysterious blessings which that
1 H. B. Garrod, Dante, Goethe's Faust, and Other Lectures, 376. * Daute. Paradiso, xxxiii. 49-57 (trans, by Wright).
ST. MATTHEW v. 8 95
vision brought. But to none was it given to accomplish the quest save to the pure in heart. The knight who could sing,
My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure —
he it was who was sanctified and consoled by the mystic vision
A gentle sound, an awful light !
Three angels bear the Holy Grail: With folded feet, in stoles of white,
On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God !
My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides,
And star-like mingles with the stars.
Sir Galahad no longer rides in harness on quests of knight- errantry ; he labours without fame in the byways of life. But he is still consoled by the reward of purity, and endures as seeing Him who is invisible.1
4. There is no true purity apart from the absolute enthrone- ment of God in the affections. It is not the absence of unholy affections, it is the presence of a holy and surpassing earnest love, that makes us really pure. Man is not made by negatives. It is not what the heart loves not, but what it loves, that makes the man : " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The soul is so supremely an altar that it must worship something in its inmost shrine ; and unless it worship God there, it cannot be pure.
Jesus saw God reflected in His own soul. His own pure soul was a mirror in which spiritual imageship to the Heavenly Father was perfectly revealed. For us His thoughts were God's thoughts. His love was God's love. His will was God's will. So perfectly at one with the holy Father was His pure heart that, when He looked into the depths of His own being, He had His profoundest revelations of the moral nature of His Father. There was no blur upon His soul. The cloudless likeness of the Heavenly Father was there. Alas, that upon our hearts the breath of sin has condensed itself so that we see in ourselves ouly a foggy image of God !
1 C. A. Vince.
96 THE PURE IN HEART
The truth in God's breast Lies trace upon trace on ours imprest : Tho' He is so bright, and we are so dim, We were made in His image to witness Him.
TJ The heart where " Christ dwells " is, so far as His residence there is unhindered and entire, the purified heart. Let Him be welcomed not into its vestibule only but into its interior chambers, and the Presence will itself be purity. Before Him so coming, so abiding, the strife of passion cannot but subside. Flowing out from His intimate converse there, the very love of God will mix itself with the motives and the movements of the will. The heart thus made the chamber of His life will by a sure law reflect His character ; nay, it will find itself shaped and dilated by His heart, not from its exterior or circumference, but from its centre.1