T[ Mark Rutherford says, " The love of the beautiful is itself moral. What we love in it is virtue. A perfect form or a delicate colour is the expression of something which is destroyed in us by subjugation to the baser desires or meanness ; and he who has been unjust to man or woman misses the true interpretation of a cloud or a falling wave." In the light of this beatitude I think he is right. Sin does not cheat a man out of the fragrance of a rose, but it cheats him out of that sweeter soul-fragrance of Divine love that is folded in every petal. Sin does not veil from our eyes the fashion of things seen, but it obscures their eternal and spirit-satisfying meaning. The impure shall see all — except Gud. That is to say, they shall see nothing as it is. For the pure-hearted all the mystery of the waking earth tells something of the soul's immortal story. Through the avenues of sight the pure heart goes on and finds insight. Through all that the ear can hear and the hand can touch, it passes into that real world that is so near to us all, if we but knew it, where failing voices utter unfailing messages and where beneath the ephemeral the soul finds the eternal.2
5. The vision of the pure in heart is its own exceeding
blessedness. Holiness has in itself the elements of happiness. It
frees us from a thousand sources of pain, the inward strife of the
heart with itself, the condemning voice of conscience, the fret and
worry of anxious worldly care, the bitterness of passion, anger,
envy, jealousy, discontent, and a thousand thorns that spring in
• H. C. G. Moule, Faith, 156.
s P. C. Ainsworth, The Blew J Life, 137.
ST. MATTHEW v. 8 97
the soil of the natural heart — these roots are all removed and the " peace of God, which passeth all understanding," keeps the heart and mind, and makes life a heaven below.
Tf Horace Bushnell gives his own experience in these words : " Clear of all the vices, having a naturally active-minded, inquiring habit, never meaning to get away from the truth, one has yet relapsed into such doubt as to find that he has nearly lost the conviction of God, and cannot, if he would, say with emphasis that God exists. Such a one pacing in his chamber, comes some day suddenly upon the question — Is there then no truth that I do believe ? Yes, there is one ; there is a distinction of right and wrong, that I never doubted, and can see not how I can. Nay, I am even quite sure of this. Then forthwith starts up the question — Have I ever taken the principle of right for my law ? Have I ever thrown my life out on it, to become all that it requires of me ? No matter what becomes of my difficulties, if I cannot take a first principle so inevitably true and live in it. Here, then, will I begin, If there is a God, as I rather hope than dimly believe there is, then He is a right God. If I have lost Him in wrong, perhaps I shall find Him in right. Will He not help me, or, perchance, even be discovered to me ? Then he prays to the dim God so dimly felt. It is an awfully dark prayer in the first look of it; but it is the truest and best that he can; the better and more true that he puts no orthodox colours on it ; and the prayer and the vow are so profoundly meant that his soul is borne up with God's help, as it were by some unseen chariot, and permitted to see the opening of heaven. He rises, and it is as if he had gotten wings. The whole sky is luminous about him. It is the morning of a new eternity. After this all troublesome doubt of God's reality is gone. A being so profoundly felt must inevitably be." l
1 0. H. Parkhurst, The Blind Man's Creed, 215.
ST. MATT. 7
The Salt of the Earth.
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