The Sermon On The Mount Fox - Preston Group

1 THE SERMONON THE MOUNTThe Key to Success in LifeANDTHE LORD'S PRAYER EMMET FOX1 Copyright 1938 by Emmet FoxPublished by Grosset & Dunlap2 TABLE OF 1 - What Did Jesus Teach?..6 Chapter 2 - The 3 - As a Man 4 - Resist Not 5 - Treasure in 6 - With What Measure Ye 7 - By Their LORD'S book is the distilled essence of years of Bible and metaphysicalstudy, and of the many lectures I have delivered. It would have beeneasier to have made it twice its present length. My object, however, is topresent the reader with a practical manual of spiritual development, and,with this end in view, I have condensed the subject matter into thesmallest compass possible, because, as every student knows, concisenessof expression is of the greatest assistance in mastering any not imagine that you can assimilate all that it contains in one or tworeadings. It should be gone over again and again until you havethoroughly grasped the utterly new outlook upon life and the absolutelyfresh scale of values which the Sermon on the Mount presents tomankind.

2 Only then will you experience the New study of the Bible is not unlike the search for diamonds in SouthAfrica. At first people found a few diamonds in the yellow clay, andthey were delighted with their good fortune, even while they supposedthat this was to be the full extent of their , upon digging deeper, they came upon the blue clay, and, to theiramazement, they then found as many precious stones in a day as theyhad previously found in a year, and what had formerly seemed likewealth faded into insignificance beside the new riches. In yourexploration of Bible Truth, see to it that you do not rest satisfied in theyellow clay of a few spiritual discoveries, but press on to the rich blueclay underneath. The Bible, however, differs from the diamond field inthe sublime fact that beneath the blue clay there are more and still moreand richer strata, awaiting the touch of spiritual perception on and onto you read the Bible, you should constantly affirm that Divine Wisdomis enlightening you.

3 That is the way to get direct have followed a convenient modern custom among writers ofmetaphysical books in capitalizing certain words that signify aspects orattributes of 1 What Did Jesus Teach?JESUS Christ is easily the most important figure that has ever appearedin the history of mankind. It makes no difference how you may regardhim, you will have to concede that. This is true whether you choose tocall him God or man; and, if man, whether you choose to consider himas the world's greatest Prophet and Teacher, or merely as a well-intentioned fanatic who came to grief, and failure, and ruin, after a shortand stormy public career. However you regard him, the fact will remainthat the life and death of Jesus, and the teachings attributed to him haveinfluenced the course of human history more than those of any otherman who has ever lived; more than Alexander, or Caesar, orCharlemagne, or Napoleon, or Washington.

4 More people's lives areinfluenced by his doctrines, or at least by the doctrines attributed to himtoday; more books are written and read and bought concerning him;more speeches are made (call them sermons) concerning him; thanconcerning all the other names mentioned put have been the religious inspiration of the whole European racethroughout the two millenniums during which that race has dominatedand moulded, the destinies of the entire world, culturally and socially, aswell as politically, and through the period in which the whole of theearth's surface was finally discovered and occupied, and in its broadoutlines shaped by civilization; this alone entitles him to the premierposition in world can hardly, therefore, be a more important undertaking than toinquire into the question of what Jesus really did stand did Jesus teach? What did he really wish us to believe and to do?

5 What were the objects that he really had at heart? And how far did heactually succeed in accomplishing these objects in his life and in his6death? How far has the religion or movement called Christianity, as ithas existed for the last nineteen centuries, really expressed or repre-sented his ideas? How far does the Christianity of today present hismessage to the world? If he should come back now, what would he sayof the self-styled Christian nations in general, and of the Christianchurches in particular of the Anglicans, the Baptists, the Catholics, theGreek Orthodox, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Quakers, theSalvationists, the Seventh Day Adventists, or the Unitarians; to cite themalphabetically? What did Jesus teach?This is the question which I have set myself to answer in this book. Ipropose to show that the message which Jesus brought has a uniquevalue because it is the Truth, and the only perfect statement of the Truthof the nature of God and of man, and of life, and of the world; and of therelationships which exist between them.

6 And far more than this, we shallfind that his teaching is not a mere abstract account of the universe,which would be of very little more than academic interest; but that ifconstitutes a practical method for the development of the soul and forthe shaping of our lives and destinies into the things that we really wishthem to explains to us what the nature of God is, and what our own natureis; tells us the meaning of life and of death; shows us why we makemistakes; why we yield to temptation; why we become sick, andimpoverished, and old; and, most important of all, he tells us how allthese evils may be overcome, and how we may bring health, happiness,and true prosperity into our lives, and into the lives of others, if theyreally wish for them, first thing that we have to realize is a fact of fundamentalimportance, because it means breaking away from all the ordinaryprepossessions of orthodoxy.

7 The plain fact is that Jesus taught notheology whatever. His teaching is entirely spiritual or Christianity, unfortunately, has largely concerned itself withtheological and doctrinal questions which, strange to say, have no part7whatever in the Gospel teaching. It will startle many good people tolearn that all the doctrines and theologies of the churches are humaninventions built up by their authors out of their own mentalities, andfoisted upon the Bible from the outside; but such is the case. There isabsolutely no system of theology of doctrine to be found in the Bible; itsimply is not there. Worthy people who felt the need of some intellectualexplanation of life, and also believed that the Bible was a revelation ofGod to man, drew the natural conclusion that the one must be within theother; and then, more or less unconsciously, proceeded to manufacturethe thing that they wished to find.

8 They did not have the spiritual ormetaphysical key. They were not upon what is called the Spiritual Basis,and consequently they sought a purely intellectual or three-dimensionalexplanation of life and there can be no such actual explanation of man's life lies in just the fact that he isessentially spiritual and eternal, and that this world, and the life that weknow intellectually, is, so to speak, but a cross section of the full truthconcerning him and a cross section of anything from a machine to ahorse never can furnish even a partial explanation of the one tiny corner of the universe, and that with only half-opened eyes, and working from an exclusively anthropocentric andgeocentric point of view, men built up absurd and very horrible fablesabout a limited and man-like God who conducted his universe verymuch as a rather ignorant and barbarous prince might conduct the affairsof a small Oriental kingdom.

9 All sorts of human weaknesses, such asvanity, fickleness, and spite, were attributed to this being. Then afarfetched and very inconsistent legend was built up concerning originalsin, vicarious blood atonement, infinite punishment for finite transgres-sions; and, in certain cases, an unutterably horrible doctrine ofpredestination to eternal torment, or eternal bliss, was added. Now, nosuch theory as this is taught in the Bible. If it were the object of theBible to teach it, it would be clearly stated in a straightforward mannerin some chapter or other; but it is "Plan of Salvation" which figured so prominently in the evangelicalsermons and divinity books of a past generation is as completelyunknown to the Bible as it is to the Koran. There never was any sucharrangement in the universe, and the Bible does not teach it at all. Whathas happened is that certain obscure texts from Genesis, a few phrasestaken here and there from Paul's letters, and one or two isolated versesfrom other parts of the Scriptures, have been taken out and piecedtogether by divines, to produce the kind of teaching which it seemed tothem ought to have been found in the Bible.

10 Jesus knows nothing of allthis. He is indeed anything but a Pollyanna, as they say, or cheapoptimist. He warns us, not once but often, that obstinacy in sin can bringvery, very severe punishment in its train, and that a man who parts withthe integrity of his soul even though he gain the whole world is atragic fool. But he teaches that we are only punished for and actuallypunished by our own mistakes; and he teaches that every man orwoman, no matter how steeped in evil and uncleanness, has alwaysdirect access to an all-loving, all-powerful Father-God, who will forgivehim, and supply His own strength to him to enable him to find himselfagain; and unto seventy times seven, if need has been sadly misunderstood and misrepresented in otherdirections too. For instance, there is no warrant whatever in his teachingfor the setting up of any form of Ecclesiasticism, of any hierarchy ofofficials or system or ritual.