03.09 The value of the pearl

IX. THE VALUE OF THE PEARL

It has often been pointed out that in the parable the merchant who is seeking goodly pearls finds one pearl of great price; and that one pearl satisfies the search for many.

He sells all he has and buys it. This goodly pearl of great price is plainly the Truth as it is in Jesus. It is presented to us as a supreme unity gathering into itself all the truth and beauty which we seek. After all, it is only in some unity some one truth which sets the place and value of all others that we can find the satisfaction of the spirit’s quest. The man of science, unless he arbitrarily arrests his journey, must pass from the laws whose working he traces, to the nature of the whole of which they are a part. The artist must seek some relationship between beauty and truth and goodness. The philosopher must find the cor. respondence between truth and life. We all need some point of view from which we can settle the proportion of all the varied elements of our being. It is this single, unifying truth which we believe to be given us in “the Word made Flesh” in the union of man with God in the person of Jesus Christ. It displaces and thrusts out nothing that the mind of man can truly know or the senses of man can rightly feel. It only brings into one light the scattered rays. It stands apart from the objects, of human thought and sensation only because it stands above them and gathers them up into its own unity. It links the universe and all its laws with God, truth with life, beauty with goodness, love with law. But this is a theme too vast and deep for such a paper as this. I cannot do better than close with the words of Dr. Trench”: “It is God alone in Whom any intelligent creature can find its centre and true repose; only when man has found Him does the great Eureka (I have found) burst forth from his lips: in Augustine’s beautiful and often quoted words, ’Lord, Thou hast made us for Thee, and our heart is restless until it resteth in Thee.’ “

TAGS: [Parables]