Unity Of The Sermon On The Mount

The Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the book of Matthew, beginning with the third verse of the fifth chapter and ending with the twenty-seventh verse of the seventh chapter, is not a mere collection of unrelated sayings of Jesus, as careless readers may suppose, but studied in the light of Christian Science it is seen to be a masterpiece of logical statement, which in clearness of expression, coherence of thought, and grandeur of conception is unsurpassed in literature.

In Science and Health (p. 14) we read, “The thunder of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount are pursuing and will overtake the ages, rebuking in their course all error and proclaiming the kingdom of heaven on earth.” The subject of this discourse of the Master is the kingdom of heaven. Its opening theme is the promises of the kingdom. These are known as the beatitudes, and comprise the first ten verses. The second theme, developed in the later beatitudes and finding its climax in the four verses which follow, may be termed the responsibilities of citizenship in the kingdom. The third theme, occupying the remainder of the fifth chapter of Matthew, is the law of the kingdom of heaven and its relation to human law and conduct.

Here it may be said that classification is unessential to the facts classified. It is superimposed for the purpose of making more evident certain relationships among the facts, its usefulness for this purpose being its only justification. This applies to the outline of the Sermon on the Mount here presented, for which outline neither authority nor complete originality is claimed.

The order above noted is so natural that we feel it to be inevitable. To each and every individual the first message of the kingdom of heaven is a benediction, the offering of new hope, the promise of better conditions, and with the beginning of the realization of these new conditions comes the consciousness of new duties and responsibilities imposed by them. These require of us that we shall know the law which governs these changes and be able to apply it to the circumstances of our immediate surroundings.

The beatitudes are essentially promises of a revolution in human consciousness. They provide for the overthrow of the conditions imposed by limiting material beliefs, and the reign of a new order wherein want and injustice are unknown; they assure us that the kingdom of heaven meets every requirement of our being. The first four are purely remedial in character; they offer unconditionally the more abundant life unfolded by Christ Jesus. The coming to humanity of the kingdom of heaven supersedes the sense of poverty with the flood of its riches, sorrow with joy, limitation with dominion, and want with complete satisfaction. The next four tell us that righteousness shall not be swallowed up by evil, but shall be established in fact and fruition; and the last of the group are something more than promises, for they imply also the obligation of those who enjoy the blessings of the kingdom of heaven to share and impart its nature. This idea is more fully developed and emphatically presented in the verses which follow. That we must share its nature is shown under the symbol of salt, and our duty to give forth the same is illustrated by the symbol of light, culminating in a positive command to glorify our Father in heaven.

Law is the code of a citizen’s obligations to his government, and its discussion naturally follows as the next orderly step after the statement of the existence and imperative nature of the obligations involved. The first four verses of this section are somewhat prefatory. In the fifth chapter, verse 17 epitomizes the entire section in its explanation of the relation of the Christ-idea to divine law and to its human expression. The two verses which follow show respectively the permanence of this law and the universality of its obligations. Verse 20 deals with the quality of the law. The kingdom of heaven is within us; its law, therefore, is an inward law, and must rule thought as well as action; the recognition of law as merely an external restraint being utterly inadequate. This verse directly introduces the main body of the section, which is devoted to further development of this same teaching by concrete illustrations.

The first examples taken for this purpose are the sixth and seventh commandments. These more than others seem to be held as applying to restraint of action regardless of thought. Jesus shows the insufficiency of this human interpretation of the commandments in comparison with the actual law of the kingdom of heaven, which controls action at its very source by the restraint of evil thoughts, or rather by their utter annihilation through the activity of spiritual purity in manifestation of its divine Principle, Love, which is the law of the kingdom of heaven. Verses 25 and 26 cause no break in the continuity of thought when we remember that the adversary with whom we are so abruptly to be at quits is not our brother, but wrong thought about our brother. Verses 29 and 30 also conclude the idea of verse 28 by showing that the value of purity of thought is above the price of material sacrifice.

The Master’s discourse here passes from consideration of the commandments to certain examples of the lesser law, to which he applies the same high standard. The discussion of adultery leads naturally to the subject of divorce, and the nuptial vow to oaths in general. In verses 38 to 42, Christ Jesus condemns the Jewish law of compensatory justice in its use as a medium for retaliation. In verses 43 to 47 he deals with the closely related law of feud. In all these things he asserts love as the law of the kingdom of heaven, and he urges the utter worthlessness of pride, gratification of passion, and all other material values, as compared with loving thought; the thought which does injustice to none and seeks the highest good for all. And in the final verse of. the section, he emphasizes this teaching by direct command as being not merely idealistic, but intensely practical and obligatory.

The theme of the fourth section, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, verses 1 to 18, is the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven as compared with the conventional righteousness of men. The logical sequence of thought is at once evident when we remember that righteousness is simply law-abidingness with respect to the law of right. Jesus discusses three forms of conventional righteousness,—almsgiving, prayer, and fasting; and in all these the same rule is maintained—that the law of the kingdom of heaven is kept only as it directs the inmost thoughts and motives of man; so governing, its rule will be genuinely manifest in outward appearance and will bring into human cognizance the conditions of the kingdom of heaven.

The fifth section, verses 19 to 34, emphasizes in every sentence the fact that the demand of citizenship in the kingdom of heaven is exclusive allegiance. It carries forward the thought of the preceding sections, that the law of the kingdom must rule the inmost thoughts, by adding that this rule must be absolute, undivided. This singleness of purpose is urged first by the three metaphors of the treasure, the seeing eye, and the two masters, and is then justified in those strong passages declaring the all-sufficiency of divine Mind, our Father, as the source of supply for every need. Its climax in verse 33 has already been anticipated in the assurance that the Father, who seeth in secret, will openly reward true righteousness.

The theme of the sixth section, which includes verses 1 to 12, in the seventh chapter, is the immediate responsiveness of the conditions of the kingdom of heaven to the activities of human thought and endeavor. These conditions are not far off, but very near us; they are brought out in our consciousness by right thinking. The first six verses deal with the reactions of thought. The idea has already been introduced in the preceding chapter, where it is so often shown that the reward of thought is on its own level. Mock righteousness, which seeks the approval of men, may hope to receive that approval, nothing more; while the righteousness of the kingdom brings with it the abundance of the kingdom: who would be forgiven must be forgiving; who would be judged righteous must himself judge righteous judgment; the mote that is in our brother’s eye, be it sin or disease, we cannot remove until the beam is taken from our own eye; in other words, not until we cease to see our brother as an outlaw and recognize him as a citizen of the kingdom.

But the appeal of such citizenship can be made only to spiritual-mind-edness, for the carnal mind never inherits the kingdom of heaven and is not to be trusted with its jewels; its reactions, likewise, are on its own level. The five verses which follow deal more directly with the response of divine Love to human need and seeking, and this section finds its climax in verse 12, the golden rule, that rule of the higher reaction wherein “Love is reflected in love” (Science and Health, p. 17).

The seventh section follows, from verses 13 to 23, and deals with the standard of citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. It begins by showing the inflexibility of the standard. Undivided allegiance is necessary, but becomes sufficient only when rightly directed. In its ultimate aspect, Truth is broad, as broad as the universe, as universal in its beneficence as the opening statement of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;” but its immediate demands are extremely exacting. Two times two are four. Truth is too specific and inclusive to admit of any other result; but the whole science of mathematics, all science in fact, is built on this very exactness and would fail utterly without it, and for this reason it is infinite in its scope. The essence of conscious citizenship in the kingdom of heaven is right thinking. The earlier verses of this chapter teach that right actions and right conditions inevitably follow right thinking. Verses 15 to 23 teach that the presence of such actions and conditions is the necessary and sufficient evidence of right thinking, and therefore the only test of citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, and they affirm the universal scientific fact that like begets like.

The closing topic, in verses 24 to 27, is the stability of the kingdom of heaven as a condition of consciousness governing thought and action, in contradistinction to the unreliability of all pseudo-science and of the state of consciousness which bears such fruit. Thus, without deviation, the thought of the Sermon on the Mount passes by logical steps from a natural beginning to a natural close. It is a perfectly rounded whole, so brief that not an idea can be spared, and yet so complete as to cover every essential fact. It is indeed a masterpiece beyond eulogy!