Oswald Chambers preaches about the necessity of having the mind of Christ to understand the Sermon on the Mount, emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit in interpreting Jesus' teachings. Chambers highlights the importance of surrendering to God as Savior before trying to live out His teachings, focusing on the need for a pure heart and genuine motives. He challenges believers to go beyond mere external actions and embrace a deeper level of integrity and love, reflecting the character of Jesus in all aspects of life.

INTRODUCTION IN order to understand the Sermon on the Mount, it is necessary to have the mind of the Preacher, and this knowledge can be gained by anyone who will receive the Holy Spirit (see Luke XL 13, John XX. 22, Acts XIX. 2). The Holy Ghost is the only expounder of the teachings of Jesus. The one abiding method of interpretation of the teachings of Jesus is the Spirit of Jesus in the heart of a believer applying His principles to the particular circum stances in which he is placed. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, says Paul, that you may make out what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Beware of placing Our Lord as Teacher first instead of as Saviour. That tendency is prevalent to-day, and it is a dangerous tendency. We must know Him first as Saviour before His teaching has any meaning for us, or before it has any meaning other than that of an ideal which leads to despair. Fancy coming to men and women with defective lives and defiled hearts and wrong main springs, and telling them to be pure in heart ! What is the use of giving us an ideal we cannot possibly attain ? We are happier without knowing it. If Jesus is only a Teacher, then all He can do is to tantalise us by erecting a standard we cannot come anywhere near. But if we know Him first as Saviour, by being born again from above, we know that He did not come to teach us only : He came to make us what He teaches we should be. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His way with us. ii STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT The Sermon on the Mount must produce despair in the natural man ; and that is the very thing Jesus means it to do, because immediately we get to despair we are willing to come to Jesus as paupers and to receive from Him. " Blessed are the poor in spirit " that is the first prin ciple of the Kingdom. So long as we have a conceited, self-righteous notion that we can do the thing if God will help us, God has to allow us to go on until we break the neck of our ignorance over some obstacle, then we are willing to come and receive from Him. The bedrock in Jesus Christ s Kingdom is poverty, not possession ; not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility " I cannot begin to do it." Then, says Jesus, " Blessed are you." That is the entrance, and it does take us a long while to believe we are poor. The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works. N.B. The Conscious and Subconscious mind. Every mind has two compartments conscious and subconscious. We say that the things we hear and read slip away from memory, they do not really, they go into the subconscious mind. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring back into the conscious mind the things that are stored in the subconscious. In studying the Bible never go on the line that because you do not understand it, therefore it is of no use. A truth may be of no use to you just now, but when the circumstances arise in which that truth is needed, the Holy Spirit will bring it back to your remem brance. This accounts for the curious emergence of the statements of Jesus ; we say " I wonder where that word came from." " He shall bring back to your remembrance the things I have said unto you." The point is will I obey Him when He does bring it back ? If I discuss the matter INTRODUCTION with someone else, the probability is that I will not obey. " Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. . . ." Always trust the originality of the Holy Spirit when He brings a word back. Bear in mind this twofold aspect of the mind, there is nothing supernatural or uncanny about it, it is simply a knowledge of how God has made us. It is foolish, therefore, to estimate only by what you consciously understand at the time. There may be much you do not begin to grasp the meaning of, but as you go on storing your mind with Bible knowledge, the Holy Spirit will bring back to your conscious mind the word you need and apply it to your, particular circumstances. These three things always work together my moral intelligence, the spontaneous originality of the Holy Spirit, and the setting of a life lived in communion with God. CONTENTS PAGE STUDY NO. 1. HIS TEACHING AND OUR TRAINING - 1 2. ACTUAL AND REAL - - 12 3. INCARNATE WISDOM AND INDIVIDUAL REASON - 35 4. CHARACTER AND CONDUCT - 62 5 [DEAS, IDEALS AND ACTUALITY - 79 STUDY No. 1. KIS TEACHING AND OUR TRAINING. Matthew V. 1-24. (1) DIVINE DISPROPORTION. Matthew V. 1-12. (a) The "Mines" of God. vv. 1-10 (cf. Luke VI. 20-26). (b) The Motive of Godliness, vv. 11-12. (2) DIVINE DISADVANTAGE. Matthew V. 13-16. (a) Concentrated Service, v. 13. (b) Conspicuous Setting, vv. 14-16. (3) DIVINE DECLARATION. Matthew V. 17-20. (a) His Mission, w. 17-19. (b) His Message, v. 20. (1) DIVINE DISPROPORTION, vv. 1-12. Our Lord began His discourse by saying " Blessed are . . . ," and His hearers must have been staggered by what fol lowed. According to Jesus, they were to be blessed in every condition which from earliest childhood they had been taught to regard as a curse. Our Lord was talking to Jews, and they believed that the sign of the blessing of God was material prosperity in every shape and form, and yet Jesus says Blessed are you for exactly the opposite. " Blessed are the poor in spirit." " Blessed are they that mourn." (a) The "Mines" of God. vv. 1-10. The first time you read the Beatitudes they appear beautiful and simple and unstartling statements, and they 1 2 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT go unobserved into the subconscious mind. We are so used to reading the sayings of Jesus that they slip over us unheeded, they sound sweet and pious and wonderfully simple, but in reality they are like spiritual torpedoes that burst and explode in the subconscious mind, and when the Holy Spirit brings them back to our consciousness we realise what startling statements they are. The Beati tudes, for instance, seem merely mild and beautiful precepts for unworldly people but of very little use for the stern world in which we live. We soon find, however, that they contain the dynamite of the Holy Ghost, they explode like a spiritual " mine " when the circumstances of our life require them to do so, and rip and tear and revolutionise all our conceptions. The test of a disciple is obedience to the light when these things come to the conscious mind. It is not that I hunt through the Bible for some precept to obey (Jesus Christ s teaching never leads me to take myself as a moral prig) ; but that I live so in touch with God that the Holy Spirit can continually bring some word of His and apply it to the circumstances I am in. I am not brought to the test until the Holy Spirit brings the word back. It is not a question of applying the Beatitudes literally, but of allowing the life of God to invade you by regenera tion, and then of soaking your mind in the teaching of Jesus which slips down into the subconscious mind ; by and bye a set of circumstances arises when one of His statements emerges, and instantly you have to decide whether you will accept the tremendous spiritual revolu tion that will be produced if you do obey this precept of Jesus. If you do obey it, your actual life becomes differ ent ; and you find you have the power to obey it if you will. That is the way the Holy Spirit works in the heart of a HIS TEACHING AND OUR TRAINING 3 disciple. The teaching of Jesus comes with astonishing discomfort to begin with, because it is out of all proportion to our natural way of looking at things ; but Jesus puts in a new sense of proportion and we have slowly to form our walk and conversation on the line of His precepts. Remember that our Lord s teaching applies only to His disciples. (b) The Motive of Godliness, vv. 11-12. The motive at the back of the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount is love for God. Read the Beatitudes with your mind fixed on God, and you will realise their neglected side. Their meaning in relationship to men is so obvious that it scarcely needs stating, but the Godward aspect is not so obvious. " Blessed are the poor in spirit " towards God. Am I a pauper towards God ? Do I know I cannot prevail in prayer ; I cannot blot out the sins of the past ; I cannot alter my disposition ; I cannot lift myself nearer God ? Then I am in the very place where I am able to receive the Holy Spirit. No man can receive Holy Spirit who is not convinced he is a pauper spiritually. " Blessed are the meek " towards God s dispensations. " Blessed are the merciful " to God s reputation. Do I awaken sympathy for myself when I am in trouble ? Then I am slandering God because the reflex thought in people s minds is How hard God is with that man. It is easy to slander God s character because He never attempts to vindicate Himself. " Blessed are the pure in heart " that is obviously Godward. " Blessed are the peace makers " between God and man, the note that was struck at the birth of Jesus. Is it possible to carry out the Beatitudes ? Never ! Unless God can do what Jesus says He can, give us the Holy Spirit who will re-make us and bear us into a new 4 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT realm. The essential life of the saint is simplicity, and Jesus makes the motive of godliness gloriously simple, viz : Be carefully careless about everything saving your relationship to Me. The motive of a disciple is to be well- pleasing to God. The true blessedness of the saint is in determinedly making and keeping God first. Herein lies the disproportion between Jesus Christ s principles and all other moral teaching : Jesus bases everything on God- realisation, while other teachers base everything on self-realisation. There is a difference between devotion to principles and devotion to a Person. Jesus never proclaimed a cause ; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself For My sake. Discipleship is based not on devotion to abstract ideals, but on devotion to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, consequently the whole of the Christian life is stamped by originality. Whenever the Holy Spirit sees a chance of glorifying Jesus, He will take your whole personality, and simply make it blaze and glow with personal passionate devotion to the Lord Jesus. You are no longer devoted to a cause nor the devotee of a principle, but the devoted love slave of the Lord Jesus. No man on earth has that love unless the Holy Ghost has imparted it to him. Men may admire Him and respect Him and reverence Him, but no man can love God until the Holy Ghost has shed abroad that love in his heart (see Romans V. 5.) The only Lover of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Holy Ghost. Jesus puts all this blessedness of high virtue and rare felicity on the ground of For My sake. " Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake." It is not suffering for conscience sake, or for convictions HIS TEACHING AND OUR TRAINING 5 sake, or because of the ordinary troubles of life, but some thing other than all that For My sake. " Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man s sake." Jesus did not say Rejoice when men separate you from their company because of your own crochetty notions but when they reproach you for My sake. When you begin to deport yourself among men as a saint, they will leave you absolutely alone, you will be reviled and persecuted. No man can stand that unless he is in love with Jesus Christ, he cannot do it for a con viction or for a creed, but he can do it for a Being whom he loves. Devotion to a Person is the only thing -that tells ; devotion to death to a Person, not devotion to a creed or a doctrine. "Who that one moment has the least descried Him, Dimly and faintly, hidden and afar Doth not despise all excellence beside Him, Pleasures and powers that are not and that are. Ay, amid all men bear himself thereafter Smit with a solemn and a sweet surprise, Dumb to their scorn and turning on their laughter Only the dominance of earnest eyes." (2) DIVINE DISADVANTAGE, vv. 13-16. The disadvantage of a saint in the present order of things is that he has to make his confession of Jesus not in secret, but glaringly public. It would doubtless be to our advantage from the self-realisation standpoint to keep quiet, and nowadays the tendency is growing stronger to say Be a Christian, live a holy life, but don t talk about it. Our Lord uses as illustrations the most conspicuous 6 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT things known to men, e.g., salt, light, and a city set on a hill, and He says Be like that in your home, in your business, in your church ; be conspicuously a Christian for ridicule or for respect according to the mood of the people you are with. Again in Matthew X. Our Lord taught the need to be conspicuous proclaimers of the truth and not to cover it up for fear of wolfish men. (vv. 26-28.) (a) Concentrated Service, v. 13. Not consecrated service, but concentrated. Consecration would soon be changed into sanctification if we would only concentrate on what God wants. Concentration means pinning down the four corners of the mind until it is settled on what God wants. The literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is child s play ; the interpretation by the Holy Spirit is the stern work of a saint, and it requires spiritual concentration. " Ye are the salt of the earth." Some modern teachers seem to think Our Lord said " Ye are the sugar of the earth," meaning that gentleness and winsomeness without curativeness is the ideal of the Christian. Our Lord s illustration of a Christian is salt, and salt is the most concentrated thing known. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. It is a disadvantage to be salt. Think of the action of salt in a wound and you realise that. If you get salt into a wound, it hurts, and if God s children get amongst those who are " raw " towards God, their presence hurts. The man who is wrong with God is like an open wound, and when salt gets in it causes annoyance and distress and he is spiteful and bitter. The disciples of Jesus in the present dispensation preserve society from corruption. The " salt " causes excessive irritation which spells persecution for the saint. How are we to maintain the healthy salty tang of saint- HIS TEACHING AND OUR TRAINING 7 liness? By remaining rightly related to God through Jesus Christ. In the present dispensation, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is within you without observation, men are called on to live out His teaching in an age that will not recognise Him, and that spells limitation and very often persecution. This is the day of the humiliation of the saints ; in the next dispensation it will be the glori fication of the saints, and the Kingdom of God will be out side as well as inside men. (b) Conspicuous Setting, vv. 14-16. The illustrations Our Lord uses are all conspicuous viz., salt, light and a city set on a hill. There is no possi bility of mistaking them. Salt to preserve from corrup tion has to be placed in the midst of it, and before it can do its work it causes excessive irritation which spells persecution. Light attracts bats and night moths, and points out the way for burglars as well as for honest people : Jesus would have us remember that men will certainly defraud us. A city is the gathering place for all the human driftwood that will not work for its own living, and the Christian will have any number of parasites and ungrateful hangers-on. All these considerations form a powerful temptation to pretend we are not salt, to put our light under a bushel, and to cover our city with a fog. But Jesus will have nothing in the nature of a covert disciple. " Ye are the light of the world." You cannot soil light, you may try to grasp a beam of light with the sootiest hand, but you leave no mark on the light. A sunbeam may shine into the filthiest hovel in the slums of a city but it cannot be soiled. A merely moral man or an innocent man may be soiled in spite of his integrity, but the man who is made pure by the Holy Ghost cannot be soiled, he is as light. Thank God for the men and women who are 8 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT spending their lives in the slums of the earth, not as social reformers to lift their brother men to cleaner styes, but as the light of God, revealing a way back to God. God keeps them as the light, unsullied. If you have been covering your light, uncover it ! Walk as children of light. The light always reveals and guides, and men dislike it and prefer darkness when their deeds are evil. (John III. 19-20.) Are we the salt of the earth ? Are we the light of the world ? Are we allowing God to exhibit in our lives the truth of these startling statements of Jesus ? (3) DIVINE DECLARATION, vv. 17-20. (a) His Mission, vv. 17-19. " I am come ... to fulfil." An amazing word ! Our shoes ought to be off our feet and every common sense mood stripped from our minds when we hear Him speak. In Him we deal with God as man, the God-Man, the re presentative of the whole human race in one Person. The men of His day traced their religious pedigree back to the constitution of God, and this young Nazarene Carpenter says I am the constitution of God, consequently to them He was a blasphemer. Our Lord places Himself as the exact meaning and fulfilment of all Old Testament prophecies. His mission, He says, is to fulfil the law and the prophets, and He further says that any man who breaks the old laws because they belong to a former dispensation, and teaches men to break them, shall suffer severe impoverishment. If the old commandments were difficult, Our Lord s principles are unfathomably more difficult. Our Lord goes behind the old law to the disposition. Everything He teaches is impossible unless He can put into me His Spirit and re- HIS TEACHING AND OUR TRAINING 9 make me from the inside. The Sermon on the Mount is quite unlike the Ten Commandments in the sense of its being absolutely unworkable unless Jesus Christ can re-make us. There are teachers who argue that the Sermon on the Mount supersedes the Ten Commandments, and that because we are not under law but under grace it does not matter whether we honour our father and mother, whether we covet, etc. That, in practical application, is sentimental dust-throwing. To be not under the law but under grace does not mean I can do as I like. It is surprising how easily we can juggle ourselves out of Jesus Christ s prin ciples by one or two pious sayings repeated often enough. The only safeguard is to keep personally related to God. The secret for all spiritual understanding is to walk in the light, not the light of my convictions, or of my theories, but the light that God is in. (1 John I. 7.) (6) His Message, v. 20. " Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteous ness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Think of the most upright man you know, the most moral, sterling, religious man (e.g., Nicodemus was a Pharisee, so was Saul of Tarsus " blame less " according to the law) who has never received the Holy Spirit, and Jesus says you must exceed his righteous ness, i.e., you have to be not only as moral as the most moral man you know, but infinitely more to be so right in your actions, so pure in your motives, that God Almighty can see nothing to blame. Is it too strong to call that a spiritual torpedo ? These statements of Jesus are the most revolutionary statements human ears ever listened to, and it needs the Holy Ghost to interpret them to us ; the shallow admiration for Jesus 10 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT Christ as a Teacher that is taught to-day is of no use. Who is going to climb that " hill of the Lord ? " To stand before God and say My hands are clean, my heart is pure ? Who can do it ? Who can stand in the eternal light of God and have nothing for Him to blame in him ? Only the Son of God, and if the Son of God is formed in me by regeneration and sanctification, He will exhibit Himself through my mortal flesh. That is the ideal of Christianity " that the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." Your disposition, says Jesus, must be right to its depths, not only your conscious motives but your unconscious motives. Now we are beyond our depth. Can God make me pure in heart ? Blessed be the Name of God, He can ! Can He alter my disposition so that when circumstances reveal me to myself, I am amazed? He can. Can He impart to me His nature until it is identically the same as His own ? He can. That and nothing less is the meaning of His Cross and Resurrection. " Except your righteousness exceed. . . ." The right eousness of the scribes and Pharises was right not wrong ; that they did other than righteousness is obvious, but Jesus is talking here of their righteousness which His disciples are to exceed. What exceeds right doing if it be not right being ? Right being without right doing is possible by refusing to enter into relationship with God, but that cannot exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus message here is that unless we exceed their righteousness in doing (the Pharisees were nothing in being), we shall never enter into the kingdom of heaven. The monks in the Middle Ages refused to take the responsibility of life, all they wanted was to be and not to do and they shut themselves away from the world, HIS TEACHING AND OUR TRAINING 11 that does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. People to-day want to do the same by cutting themselves off from this and that . relationship. If Our Lord had meant exceed in being only, He would not have used the word " exceed," He would have said " Except your righteousness be otherwise than. ..." You cannot exceed the righteousness of the most moral man you know on the line of what he does, but only on the line of what he is. The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount must produce despair in the natural man ; if it does not, it is because you have paid no attention to it. Pay attention to Jesus Christ s teaching and you will soon say "Who is sufficient for these things ? " " Blessed are the pure in heart." If Jesus Christ means what He says, where am I in regard to it ? Come unto Me says Jesus. STUDY No. 2. ACTUAL AND REAL. Matthew V. 21-42. (1) THE ACCOUNT WITH PURITY. Matt. V. 21-30. (a) Disposition and Deeds, w. 21-22. (6) Temper of Mind and Truth of Manner, w. 23-26. (c) Lust and License, vv. 27-28. (d) Direction of Discipline, w. 29-30. (2) THE ACCOUNT WITH PRACTICE. Matt.V.31-37 (a) Speech and Sincerity, v. 33. (b) Irreverent Reverence, w. 34-36. (c) Integrity, v. 37. (3) THE ACCOUNT WITH PERSECUTION. Matt. V. 38-42. (a) Insult, w. 38-39. (b) Extortion, v. 40. (c) Tyranny, w. 41-42. A man cannot begin to take in anything he has not begun to think about, consequently until a man is born again what Jesus says does not mean anything to him* The Bible is a universe of revelation facts which have no mean ing for me until I am born from above, when I am born again I see in it what I never saw before. I am lifted into the realm where Jesus lives and I begin to see what He sees. (John III. 3.) By Actual is meant the things we come in contact with 12 ACTUAL AND REAL 13 by our senses, and by Real is meant that which lies behind, the things we cannot get at by our senses, (cf . 2 Cor. IV. 18.) The fanatic sees only the real and ignores the actual ; the materialist looks only at the actual and ignores the real. The only sane Being who ever trod this earth ; was Jesus Christ because in Him the actual and the real were one. Jesus Christ does not stand first in the actual world, He stands first in the real world ; that is why the natural man does not bother his head about Him " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him." When we are born from above we begin to see the actual things in the light of the real. We say that prayer alters things, but prayer does not alter actual things half so much as it alters the man who sees the actual things. In the Sermon on the Mount Our Lord brings the actual and the real together. (1) THE ACCOUNT WITH PURITY, vv. 21-30. Our Lord in these verses is laying down the principle that if men are going to follow Him and obey His Spirit, they must lay their account with purity. No man can make himself pure by obeying laws. Purity is not a question of doing things rightly, but of the doer on the . inside being right. Purity is difficult to define, it is best thought of as the state of heart just like the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. Purity is not innocence; innocence is the characteristic of a child, and although, profoundly speaking, a child is not pure, yet his innocence presents us with all that we understand by purity. Innocence is a beautiful thing in a child s life, but men arid women ought not to be innocent, they ought to be tested and tried and pure. No man is born pure, purity is the outcome of conflict. 14 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT The pure man is not the man who has never been tried, but the man who knows what evil is and has overcome it. The same with virtue and morality, no one is born virtuous and moral, we are born un-moral. Morality is always the outcome of conflict, not of necessity. Jesus Christ demands that purity be explicit as well as implicit, that is, my actual conduct, the actual chastity of my bodily life, the actual chastity of my mind, is to be beyond the censure of Almighty God not beyond the censure of ray fellow men, that would produce Pharisaism, I can always deceive the other fellow. Jesus Christ has under taken by His Redemption to put in me a heart so pure that God can see nothing to censure in it. That is the marvel of the Redemption that Jesus Christ can give me a new heredity, the unsullied heredity of the Holy Spirit, and if it is there, says Jesus, it will work out in actual history. In Matthew XV. Our Lord tells His disciples what the human heart is like " Out of the heart proceed. ..." and then follows the catalogue. We say " I never felt any of those things in my heart," and we prefer to trust our innocent ignorance rather than Jesus Christ s penetration. Either Jesus Christ must be the supreme authority on the human heart or He is not worth listening to. If I make conscious innocence the test, I am likely to come to a place where I will find with a shuddering awakening that what Jesus said is true, and I will be appalled at the possibility of evil in me. If I have never been a blackguard, the reason is a mixture of cowardice and the protection of civilised life ; but when I am undressed before God I find that Jesus Christ is right in His diagnosis. So long as I remain under the refuge of innocence, I am living in a fool s paradise. There is always a reason to be found ACTUAL AND REAL l in myself when I try to disprove what Jesus says. Jesus Christ demands that the heart of a disciple be fathomlessly pure, then unless He can give me His dis position, His teaching is tantalising ; if all He came to do was to mock me by telling me to be what I know I never can be, I can afford to ignore Him. But if He can give me His own disposition of holiness, then I begin to see how to lay my account with purity. Jesus Christ is the sternest and the gentlest of Saviours. The Gospel of God is not that Jesus died for my sins only, but that He gave Himself for me that I might give myself to Him. God cannot take from me goodness, He will take from me badness, and will give me for it the solid goodness of the Lord Jesus. (See 2 Cor. V. 21.) (a) Disposition and Deeds, vv. 21-22. Our Lord is using an illustration that was familiar to the disciples. If a man disregarded the common judg ment, he was in danger of being brought into an inner court, and if he was contemptuous with that court, he was in danger of the final judgment. Jesus uses this illustra tion of the ordinary exercise of judgment to show what the disposition of a disciple must be like, viz., that my motive, the place I cannot get at myself, must be right the disposition behind the deed, the motive behind the actual occurrence. I may never be angry in deed, but Jesus demands the impossibility of anger in disposition. The motive of my motives, the spring of my dreams, must be so right that right deeds will naturally follow. In Psalm CXXXIX the Psalmist is realising that he is too big for himself, and he prays O Lord, explore me, search me out, and see if there be any way of grief in me, trace out the dreams of my dreams, the motives of my motives, 16 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT make those right, and lead me in the way everlasting. Deliverance from sin is not deliverance from conscious sin only, it is deliverance from sin in God s sight, and He can see down into a region I know nothing about. By the marvellous Atonement of Jesus Christ applied to me by the Holy Spirit, God can purify the springs of my uncon scious life until the temper of my mind is unblameable in His sight. Beware of refining away the radical aspect of Our Lord s teaching by saying that God puts in something to counteract the wrong disposition, that is a compromise. Jesus never teaches us to curb and suppress the wrong disposition ; He gives us a totally new disposition, He alters the mainspring of action. Our Lord s teaching can only be interpreted by the new Spirit which He puts in ; it can never be taken as a series of rules and regulations. A man cannot imitate the disposition of Jesus, it is either there or it is not. When the Son of God is formed in me, He is formed in my human nature, and I have to put on the new man in accordance with His life and obey Him, then His disposition will work out all the time. We make our character out of the disposition we have. Char acter is what we make, disposition is what we are born with, and when we are born again we get a new disposition. A man must make his own character, but he cannot make his disposition, that is a gift. Our natural disposition is gifted to us by heredity ; by regeneration God gives us the disposition of His Son. Jesus Christ is pure to the depths of His motives, and if His disposition can be formed in me, then I see how I can lay my account with purity. " Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born again." If I will let God alter my heredity, I will become devoted to Him, and Jesus Christ has gained a disciple. Many of ACTUAL AND REAL 17 us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus. Our Lord goes behind the old law to the disposition. Everything He says is impossible unless He can put into me His Spirit and re-make me from the inside, then I begin to see how it can be done. When a man is born from above, he does not need to pretend he is a saint, he cannot help being one. Am I going to be a spiritually real man or a whitewashed humbug ? Am I a pauper in spirit or conceited with my own earnestness ? We are so tremendously in earnest that we are blinded by our earnest ness and never see that God is more in earnest than we are. Thank God for the absolute poverty of spirit that receives from Him all the time. There is only one way in which as a disciple you will know that Jesus has altered your disposition, and that is by trying circumstances. When you are brought into trying circumstances, instead of feeling resentment, you will experience a most amazing change on the inside. When circumstances put you to the test you will say " WTiy, bless God, this is an amazing alteration, I know now that God has altered me, because if that had happened before I would have been sour and irritable and sarcastic and spiteful, but now there is a well of sweetness on the inside which I know never came from myself." The proof that God has altered our disposition is not that we persuade ourselves He has, but that we prove He has when circum stances put us to the test. Instead of the criticism of Christians being wrong, it is absolutely right. When a man says he is born again, he is put under scrutiny, and rightly so. If we are born again of the Holy Ghost and have the life of Jesus in us by means of His Cross, we have , to show it in the way we walk and talk and transact all : our business. 18 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT (b) Temper of Mind and Truth of Manner, vv. 23-26. Our Lord in these verses uses another illustration familiar in His day. If a man was taking a paschal lamb to the priest as an offering and remembered he had leaven in his house, he had to go back and take out the leaven before he brought his offering. We do not carry lambs to sacrifice, but the spiritual meaning of the illustration is tremendous, it emphasises the difference between reality and sincerity. If when you come to the altar, says Jesus, there you remember your brother has ought against you, don t say another word to Me, but go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Jesus does not mention the other person, He says You go. He does not say Go half way ; first go. There is no question of your rights. Talk about practical home-coming truth ! That hits us where we live. A man cannot stand as a humbug for one second before Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit makes you sensitive to things you never thought of before. Never object to the intense sensitiveness of the Holy Spirit in you when He is educating you down to the scruple ; and never discard a conviction. If it is important enough for the Holy Spirit to have brought it to your mind, that is the thing He is detecting. The test Jesus gives is not the truth of our manner but the temper of our mind. Many of us are wonderfully truthful in manner, but our temper of mind in God s sight is rotten. The thing Jesus alters is the temper of mind. If when you come to the altar, there you remember Jesus does not say There you rake up something in your mind, that is where Satan gets hold of embryo Christians and makes them hyper-conscientious ; but if at the altar ACTUAL AND REAL 19 there you remember. . . The inference is that the Holy Spirit brings it to your memory, never check it, say Yes, Lord, I recognise it, and obey Him at once no matter what the humiliation is. It is impossible to do it until God has altered your temper of mind ; but if you are a saint you find you have no difficulty in doing what otherwise would be an impossible humiliation. The disposition which will not have the Son of God rule is the disposition of my claim to my right to myself ; that, and not immorality, is the essence of sin : I will possess my right to myself in this particular matter. But if my disposition has been altered,. I will obey Jesus at all costs. Watch the thing that makes you morally snort. If you have not had the temper of your mind altered by Jesus, when the Holy Spirit brings something to your memory to be put right, you will say No, indeed, I am not going to make it up when I was in the right and they were in the wrong, they will say I knew I would make you say you were sorry. Unless you are willing to yield absolutely your right to yourself on that point, you need not pray any more, there is a barrier absolutely higher than Calvary between you and God. That is the temper of mind in all of us until it has been altered. When it has been altered, the other temper of mind is there that makes reconciliation as natural as breathing, and to our astonishment we find we can do what we could not do before. Instantly you obey, you find the temper of your mind is real. Jesus makes us real, not only sincere. The people who are sincere without being real are not hypocrites, they are perfectly earnest and honest and desirous of fulfilling what Jesus wants, but they really cannot do it, the reason being that they have not received the One who makes them real, viz., the Holy Spirit. 20 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT Jesus brings men to the practical test. It is not that I say I am pure in heart but that I prove I am in my deeds ; I am not only sincere in manner but sincere in the attitude of my mind. All through the Sermon on the Mount the same truth is brought out. " Except your right eousnes exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. ..." We have to fulfil all the old law and do much more, and the only way it can be done is by letting Jesus alter us on the inside, and by remembering that everything He tells us to do we can do. The whole point of Our Lord s teaching is Obey Me, and you will find you have a wealth of power on the inside. (c) Lust and License, vv. 27-28. Our Lord goes to the root of the matter every time with no apology. Sordid ? Frantically sordid, but sin is frantically sordid, and there is no excuse in false modesty or in refusing to face the music of the devil s work in this life. Jesus Christ faced it and He will make us face it. Our natural idea of purity is that it means according obedience to certain laws and regulations, but that is apt to be prudery. There is nothing prudish in the Bible. The Bible insists on purity, not prudery. There are bald shocking statements in the Bible, but from cover to cover it will do nothing in the shape. of harm to the pure in heart, it is to the impure in heart that these things are corrupting. If Jesus Christ can only make us prudish, we should be horrified if we had to go and work amongst the moral abominations of heathendom, but with the purity Jesus Christ puts in He can take us where He went Himself, and make us capable of facing the vilest moral corruption unspotted, kept pure as He is Himself. We are scandalised at social immoralities because our social sense of honour is upset, but are we cut to the heart when we see a man ACTUAL AND REAL 21 live in pride against God? When the Holy Ghost is at work He puts in a new standard of judgment and proportion. Remember that every religious sentiment that is not carried out on its right level carries with it a secret immor ality, you are privately immoral if not publicly. That is the way human nature is constituted, whenever you allow an emotion that you do not carry out on its legitimate level, then it will react on an illegitimate level ; grip it on the threshold of your mind in a vice of blood and allow it no more way. You have no business to harbour an emotion the conclusion of which you can see to be wrong. God does not give a man a new body when he is saved, he has the same body but a new disposition. God alters the mainspring, He puts love in the place of lust. What is lust ? I must have it at once the impatience of desire. Love can wait seven years ; lust can t wait two seconds. Esau and his mess of pottage is a picture of lust ; Jacob serving for Rachel is a picture of love. In these verses lust is put on the lowest level, but remember, lust runs from the lowest basis of immorality right up to the very height of spiritual life. Jesus Christ penetrates right straight down to the basis of our desires. If ever a man is going to stand where lust never strikes him, it can only be because Jesus has altered his disposition. It is impossible unless Jesus Christ can do what He says He can. A disciple has to be free from the degradation of lust, and the marvel of the Redemption is that Jesus can free him from it. Jesus Christ s claim is that He can do for a man what he cannot do for himself. Jesus does not alter our human nature, it does not need altering, He alters the mainspring, and the great marvel of the salvation of Jesus is that He alters heredity. Lust is the impatience of desire ; license 22 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT means I will do what I like and care for no one ; liberty means I have the power to do what is right. Do you see how we are growing ? The disciples were being taught by Jesus to lay their account with purity. Purity is too deep down for us to get to naturally. The only exhibition of purity is the purity in the heart of Our Lord, and that is the purity He implants in us, and He says we will know whether the purity is there by the temper of mind we exhibit when we come up against things which before would have awakened in us lust and self -desire. It is not only a question of possibility on the inside, but of a possibility that shows itself in performance. That is the only test there is, " he that doeth righteousness is righteous." (1 John III. 7.) (d) Direction of Discipline, vv. 29-30. If God has altered the disposition, where is the need for discipline ? Yet in these verses Our Lord speaks of very stern discipline, to the parting with the right hand and the eye. The reason for the discipline is that our bodies have been used by the wrong disposition, and when the new disposition is put in, the old physical case is not taken away, it is left there for us to discipline and make it an obedient servant to the new disposition. (Romans VI. 19.) "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." What does that mean ? It means absolute unflinching sternness in dealing with the right things in yourself that are not the best. " The good is the enemy of the best" in every man, the bad never is, but the good that is not good enough. Your right hand is not a bad thing, it is one of the best things you have got, but, says Jesus, if it offends you in developing your spiritual ACTUAL AND REAL 23 life, if it hinders your following My precepts, cut it off and cast it from you. Jesus Christ talked rugged truth, He was never ambiguous, and He says it is better to be maimed than damned, better that you should enter into life lame in man s sight and lovely in God s than that you should be lovely in man s sight and lame in God s. It is a maimed life to begin with, such as Jesus describes in these verses ; otherwise we may look all right in the sight of our fellow men , but remarkably twisted and wrong in the sight of God. One of the principles of Our Lord s teaching which we are slow to grasp is that the only basis of the spiritual is the sacrifice of the natural. The natural life is neither moral nor immoral, I make it moral or immoral by my ruling disposition. Jesus teaches that the natural life is meant for sacrifice, we can give it as a gift to God, which is the only way to make it spiritual. (See Romans XII. 1-2.) That is where Adam failed, he refused to sacrifice the natural life and make it spiritual by obeying God s voice in it, consequently he sinned, the sin of taking his right to himself. Why should God make it that the natural has to be sacrified to the spiritual by me ? God did not. God made it that the natural had to be trans formed into the spiritual by obedience ; sin made it that the natural had to be sacrificed, which is very different. If you are going to be spiritual, you must barter the natural, sacrifice it. If you say, I do not want to sacrifice the natural for the spiritual, then, Jesus says, you must barter the spiritual. It is not a punishment but an eternal principle. This line of discipline is the sternest that ever struck mankind, there is nothing more heroic and grand than the Christian life. Spirituality is not a sweet tendency towards piety in people who have not enough life in them to be bad ; spirituality is the possession of the life of God which 24 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT i is masculine in its strength, and He will make the most corrupt, twisted, sin-stained life spiritual if He be obeyed. Chastity is strong and fierce, and the man who is going to be chaste for Jesus Christ s sake has a gloriously sterling job in front of him. When Jesus has altered your disposition, you have to put your body into harmony with the new disposition, to get the body to exercise the new disposition, and it can only be done by stern discipline, discipline which will mean cutting off a great many things for your own spiritual life s sake. There are things that are to you as your right hand and your eye, but you dare not use them, and the world that knows you says How absurd you are to cut off that, whatever is there wrong in a " right hand ? " and they will call you a fanatic and a crank. If a man has never been a crank or a fanatic, it is a pretty sure sign that he has never begun seriously to consider life. In the beginning the Holy Spirit will check your doing a great many things that may be perfectly right for everyone else, but not right for you. No one can decide for another what is to be cut off, and you have no right to use your present limitation to criticise someone else. Be prepared to be a limited fool in the sight of others, says Jesus, in order to further your spiritual character. If I am only willing to give up wrong things for Jesus Christ, never let me talk about being in love with Him. We say Why shouldn t I ? there is no harm in it. For pity s sake, go and do it, but remember that the construc tion of a spiritual character is doomed once you take that line. Anyone will give up wrong things if he knows how to, but am I prepared to give up the best I have got for Jesus Christ ? The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights. ACTUAL AND REAL 25 (2) THE ACCOUNT WITH PRACTICE, w. 31-37. Practice means continually doing that which no one sees or knows but myself. Habit is the result of practice, by continually doing the thing it becomes second nature. The difference between men is not a difference of personal power, but that some men are disciplined and others are not. The difference is not the degree of mental power, but the degree of mental discipline. If I have taught myself how to think, I have mental power plus the discipline of having got it under way. Beware of impulse. Impulsiveness is the characteristic of a child, but it ought not to be the characteristic of a man, it means he has not disciplined himself. Undeterred impulse is undisciplined power. Every habit is purely mechanical, and whenever we form a habit it makes a material difference in the brain. The material of the brain alters very slowly, but it does alter, and by repeatedly doing a thing a groove is formed in the material of the brain and it becomes easier to do it again, until at last you become unconscious of doing it. When we are regenerated, by the power and the presence of God we can reform every habit that is not in accordance with His life. Never form a habit gradually, do it at once, do it sharply and definitely, and never allow a break. We have to learn to form habits according to the dictates of the Spirit of God. The power and the practice must go together. When we fail it is because we have not prac tised, not brought the mechanical part of our nature into line. If I keep at it practising, what I practise becomes my second nature, then in a crisis I find that not only does God s grace stand by me, but also my own nature. The practising is mine not God s and the crisis reveals whether or not I have been practising. The reason we 26 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT fail is not the devil, but inattention on our part arising from the fact that we have not disciplined ourselves. w. 31-32. Marriage and money form the elemental constitution of personal life and social life. They are the touchstone of reality, and around these two things the Holy Spirit works all the time. Marriage is one of the mountain peaks on which God s thunder blasts souls to hell or on which His light transfigures human lives in the eternal heavens. Jesus Christ faces fearlessly the question of sin and wrong, and He teaches us to face it fearlessly. There is no circumstance so dark and complicated, no life so twisted, that He cannot put right. The Bible was not written for babes and fools, it was written for men and women who have to face hell s facts as well as heaven s facts in this life. If Jesus Christ cannot touch those lives which present a smooth face but have a hideous tragedy behind, what is the good of His salvation ? But, bless God, He can. He can alter my disposition, alter the dreams of my dreams, until lust no longer dwells there. (a) Speech and Sincerity, v. 33. Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same. Remember, says Jesus, that you have to stand before the tribunal of God, not of men ; practise the right kind of speech, and your Father in heaven will back up all that is true. If you have to back it up yourself, it is of the evil one. You have no right to call in anyone to back it up, your word ought to be quite sufficient, whether men believe you or not is a matter of indifference. Refrain your speech until it conveys the sincerity of your mind. Until the Son of God is formed in me I am not sincere, I am not even honest, but when His life comes into me, He makes me honest with myself ACTUAL AND REAL 27 and generous and kind towards others. We all know men whose word is their bond, there is no need for anyone to back up the word, the character and the life are sufficient. There is a snare in being able to talk easily about God s truth because frequently that is where it ends, if you can get a good expression for truth the danger is you will know no more. Most of us can talk piously, we have the practice but not the power. Jesus is saying let your conversation spring from such a basis of the Holy Spirit that everyone who listens is built up by it. Unaffected sincerity always builds up ; corrupt communication makes you feel mean and narrow. There are men who never say a bad word yet their influence is devilish. Don t pay attention to the outside of the platter, pay attention to the inside and practise the speech that is in accordance with the life of the Son of God in you, and slowly and surely your speech and your sincerity will be in accord. (b) Irreverent Reverence, w. 34-36. In Our Lord s day the habit was common, as it is to day, of backing up ordinary assertions with an appeal to the name of God. Jesus checks that, He says never call on anything in the nature of God to attest what you say, speak simply and truly, realising that truth in a man is the same as truth in God. To call in God as a witness to back up what you say is nearly always a sign that what you are saying is not true. If you can find eight or more reasons for the truth of what you say, it is proof that what you say is not strictly true, if it were, you would never have to find the reasons to prove it. Jesus Christ puts in a truthfulness that never takes knowledge of itself. Irreverent reverence is what Our Lord checks, talking flippantly about those things which ought only to be mentioned with the greatest reverence. I remember an 28 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT Indian woman who got wonderfully saved, she was an ugly woman but at the pronouncement of the name of Jesus Christ, her face was transfigured, the whole soul of the woman was in reverent adoration of her Lord and Master. (c) Integrity, v. 37. Integrity means the unimpaired purity of the heart. God can make our words the exact expression of the dis position He has put in. Jesus taught by example and precept that no man should stand up for his own honour but only for the honour of another. Our Lord was never careful of His own honour " He made Himself of no reputation ; " men called Him a glutton and a wine- bibber, a madman, devil-possessed, and He never opened His mouth ; but immediately they said a word against His Father s honour, He not only opened His mouth but He said some terrible things. (See Mark XL 15-18.) Jesus Christ by His Spirit alters our standard of honour, and a disciple will never care about what people say of him, but he will care tremendously what people say of Jesus. He realises that his Lord s honour is at stake in his life, not his own honour. What is the thing that rouses you ? That is an indication of where you live. Scandal should be treated as you treat mud on your clothes. If you try and deal with it while it is wet, you rub the mud into the texture, but leave it till it is dry and you flick it off with a touch, it is gone without a trace. Leave scandal alone, never touch it. Let people do what they like with your truth, but never explain it. Jesus never explained anything, we are always explaining, and we get into tangles by not leaving things alone. We need to pray St. Augustine s prayer " O Lord, deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself." ACTUAL AND REAL 29 Our Lord never told His disciples when they made mistakes, they made any number of blunders, but He went on quietly planting the truth, and He let mistakes correct themselves. In the matter of praise, when I am not sure of having done well I always like to find out what people think ; when I am certain I have done well, I don t care an atom whether folks praise me or not. The same thing with regard to fear, we all know men who say they are not afraid, but the very fact they say it, proves they are. We have to learn to live on the line of integrity all through. Another truth we do not sufficiently realise is the in fluence of what we think over what we say. A man may say wonderfully truthful things, but what he thinks is what tells. It is possible to say truthful things in a truthful manner and to tell a lie by thinking. I can repeat to someone else what I heard you say, word for word, every detail scientifically accurate, and yet convey a lie in saying it because the temper of my mind is different to the temper of your mind when you said it. A lie is not an inexactitude of speech, a lie is in the motive. I may be actually truthful and an incarnate liar. It is not the literal words that count but their influence on others. Suspicion is always of the devil and is the cause of people saying more than they need to say, and in that aspect it " cometh of evil." If you submit children to a sceptical atmosphere and call in question all they say, it will instil the habit of backing up what is said Well, ask him if you don t believe me. Such a thought would never occur to a child naturally, it only occurs when the child has to talk to suspicious people who continually say Now I don t know whether what you are saying is true. The child gets the idea that it does not speak the truth unless someone 30 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT backs it up. It never occurs to a pure honest heart to back up what it says, it is a wounding insult to be met with suspicion, and that is why from the first we ought never to submit a child to suspicion. (3) ACCOUNT WITH PERSECUTION, w. 38-42. (a) Insult, v. 38-39. If a disciple is going to follow Jesus, he must lay his account not only with purity and with practice, but also with persecution. The picture Our Lord gives is not familiar to us. In the East a slap on the cheek is the greatest form of insult, its equivalent with us would be spitting in the face. Epictetus, a Roman slave, said that a slave would rather be thrashed to death than nicked on the cheek. Jesus says If any man smite you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on Jesus Christ s errands, there is no time to be taken in standing up for ourselves. Personal insult will be the occasion in the saint of revealing the incredible sweetness of the Lord Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount hits where it is meant to hit, and it hits every time. Jesus says Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, as My representative, pay no attention, i.e., show a disposition equivalent to turning the other cheek also. Either Jesus Christ was mad to say such things or He was the Son of God. Naturally, if a man does not hit back it is because he is a coward ; super- naturally, it is the manifestation of the Son of God in him, both have the same appearance outwardly. The hypo crite and the saint are the same in the public eye, the saint exhibits a meekness which is contemptible in the eye of the world, that is the immense humiliation of being ACTUAL AND REAL 31 a Christian. My strength has to be the strength of the Son of God, and He was " crucified through weakness/ Do the impossible, and immediately you do, you know that God alone has made it possible. These things apply to a disciple of Jesus and to no one else. The only way to interpret the words of God is to let the Holy Spirit interpret them for you. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would bring back to our remembrance what He has said, and His counsel is When you come across personal insult, not only don t resent it, but make it the occasion of exhibiting the Son of God. The secret of a disciple is personal devotion to a personal Lord, and a man is open to the same charge as Jesus was, viz., that of inconsistency, but Jesus was never incon sistent to God. There is more than one consistency. There is the consistency of a little child, a child is never the same, always changing and developing, a consistent child ; and there is the consistency of a brick wall, a petrified consistency. A Christian is to be consistent only to the life of the Son of God in him, not consistent to hard and fast creeds. Men pour themselves into creeds, and God Almighty has to blast them out of their prejudices before they become devoted to Jesus. " The expulsive power of a new affection " that is what Christianity supplies. The reality of the life of the Son of God in you must show itself in the appearance of your life. The miracle of regeneration is necessary before we can live the Sermon on the Mount. The Son of God alone can live it, and if God can form in me the life of the Son of God, as He introduced Him into human history, then I can see how it can be done, and that is Jesus Christ s message Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born again, (cf. Luke I. 35.) 32 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT (b) Extortion, v. 40. Another unfamiliar picture to us, but it had a tremendous meaning in Our Lord s day. If a man s cloak and coat were taken from him as the result of a law suit, he could get back the loan of the coat to sleep in at night. Jesus uses the illustration to point out what we are going to meet with as His disciples. If they extort from you anything while you are on My service, let them have it, but go on with your work. If you are My disciple, says Jesus, you have no time to stand up for yourself. Never insist on your rights. The Sermon on the Mount is not Do your duty, but Do what is not your duty. It is never your duty not to resist evil, that is only possible to the Son of God in you. (c) Tyranny, vv. 41-42. Under the Roman dominance, the soldiers could compel anyone to be a baggage carrier for a mile. Simon the Cyrenian is a case in point, the Roman soldiers compelled him to be baggage carrier for Jesus. Jesus says if you are My disciple, you will always go the second mile, you will always do more than your duty, there will none of this spirit Oh well, I can t do any more, they have always misunderstood and misrepresented me, but you will go the second mile, not for their sake but for Jesus Christ s sake. It would have been a sorry look-out for us if God had not gone the second mile with us. The first thing God requires of a man is to get born from above, then when he goes the second mile for men it is the Son of God in him Who does it. The only right of a Christian is the right not to insist on his rights. Every time I insist on my rights I hurt the Son of God. I can prevent the Son of God being hurt if I take the blow myself, but if I refuse to take it, it goes back on Him. (cf. Col. I. 24.) ACTUAL AND REAL 33 v. 42 is an arena for theological acrobats, " Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." That is the statement either of a madman or of God Incarnate. We always say we do not know what Jesus means when we know perfectly well He means something which is a blunt impossibility unless He can re-make us and make it possible. Jesus brings us with terrific force straight up against the impossible thing, and until we get to the place of despair we will never receive from Him the grace that enables us to do the impossible thing and manifest His Spirit. These statements of Jesus revolutionise all our concep tions about charity. Much of our modern philanthropy is based on the motive of giving to the poor man because he deserves it, or because we are distressed at seeing him poor. Jesus never taught charity from those motives, He says " Give to him that asketh thee," not because he deserves it, but because I tell you to. The great motive in all giving is Jesus Christ s command. We can always find a hundred and one reasons why we should not obey Our Lord s commands because we will trust our reasoning rather than His reason, and our reason does not take God into calculation. How does civilisation argue ? Does this man deserve what I am giving him ? Immediately you talk like that, the Spirit of God says Who are you? Do you deserve more than other men the blessings you have got? " Give to him that asketh thee." Why do we always make it mean money ? Jesus makes no mention of money. The blood of most of us seems to run in gold. The reason we make it mean money is that that is where our heart is. Peter said " Silver and gold have I none ; but such as I have, give I thee." God grant we may understand that the 34 STUDIES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT spring of giving is not impulse nor inclination, but the in spiration of the Holy Spirit I give because Jesus tells me to. The way Christians wriggle and twist and compromise over this verse springs from infidelity in the ruling pro vidence of our Heavenly Father. We enthrone common sense as God and say It is absurd, if I give to everyone that asks, every beggar in the place will be at my door. Try it. I have yet to find the man who obeyed Jesus Christ s command and did not realise that God restrained those who beg. If you try to apply these principles of Jesus literally without the indwelling Spirit, there will be no proof that God is with you, but once get rightly related to God and let the Holy Spirit apply the words to your circumstances, and you will find the restraining hand of God, for if ever God s ruling is seen, it is seen when once a disciple obeys what Jesus commands. STUDY No. 3. INCARNATE WISDOM AND INDIVIDUAL REASON. Matthew V. 43-48, VI. (1) DIVINE RULE OF LIFE. Matthew V. 43-48. (a) Exhortation, vv. 43-44. (b