THE PURE IN HEART.

THE SIXTH BEATITUDE.

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” — St. Matt. v. 8.

"Mysticism,” said John Wesley once, “is just heart religion.” Here in the Sixth Beatitude of Jesus is the essence of mysticism — its aim to see God; and its method, by purity of heart. But, though one calls such a type of religion by a name which suggests theology and which has been appropriated to describe a certain class of thinkers, mysticism is really the religion of the great masses of mankind. The permanent elements of religion come to most men under a mystical guise. It is not evidences and arguments which are their origin, but the universal instincts of the human soul. Unlettered men perceive them; poor sufferers on their painful beds, hardly capable of consecutive thought, cling to them with an assurance which reason could never bring; little children have known them better than the wise. “Wouldst thou plant for eternity?" said Carlyle, “then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart. Wouldst thou plant for year and day? then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding. Religion is planted in that which is deepest in man. Therefore it lasts: and despite any passing phase of doubt or criticism it will last for ever.

"It is with the heart that a man believes.” The two most famous churchmen of France in the twelfth century were St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abélard. Of the two, Abelard had by far the more alert, the subtler, and the more brilliant mind. He was a thinker and a teacher, while Bernard was only a prophet. But who can doubt which of the two saw most of things divine, and which of the two has left for us to-day the more precious legacy? The criticism and dialectic of Abelard, in advance of his time as they were, have perished from the memory of men, and his name is chiefly associated with a somewhat sordid love story; while, ever as men sing Bernard’s hymn, “Jesus, the very thought of Thee,” they will know the meaning of the Beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

It would indeed be wrong to fancy that any slight is thus cast upon the great disciplines by which the learned theologians reach their results. The Beatitude gives no honour to mental sloth. A man often says, "I know,” when he only means, "I am too lazy to prove.” The criticism of sacred books and the labours of philosophy have a place in furnishing "a reason for the hope that is in us.” Yet it is not by such a path that we reach “the hope that is in us.” The simplest and most untutored soul may find it, if only his heart be pure.

We believe that God made man in His own image, and that man’s soul is a mirror in which the mind of God is reflected.

"Speak to Him, then, for He heart, and spirit with spirit can meet;

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."

It is perhaps impossible to explain the methods by which man thus sees his Maker: this confident leap of the whole nature — thought, emotion, will — in one sublime affirmation. It is perhaps wisest for most to say that here is an experience — a fact of consciousness as sure as any in life. If one seeks an analogy for it, some analogy may be seen in our apprehension of poetry, or beauty, or music, or human love.

There is a memorable passage in Plato’s Apology, in which Socrates tells the result of his questioning of the poets about their methods. “Taking up some of their poems which seemed to me most elaborately finished, I questioned them as to their meaning. I am ashamed, O Athenians, to tell you the truth; however, it must be told. Almost all who are present could have given a better account of them than they by whom they had been composed. I soon discovered this, therefore, with regard to the poets, that they do not effect their object by wisdom, but by a certain natural inspiration.”

Ask any great interpreter of nature about the meaning of the outside world for the soul of man — read Wordsworth — and you will find the same phenomenon: "Sensation, soul, and form all melted in him"; "Words needed none; his spirit drank the spectacle.” Beauty and sublimity came in an immediate apprehension utterly apart from the logical understanding. It is as impossible to describe in words, yet quite as sure a fact of consciousness, as the love of man for woman, or of woman for man — that great source of human happiness, that turning-point of the human tragedy, which yet has no terminology which can be quoted without exciting a smile.

In some such way might one illustrate the vision of God. Man, because he is a spirit, is able to commune with the Great Spirit; and we know the Father as by love and fellowship we know an earthly friend. This is the wonderful truth, so revolutionary, so far reaching, which is at the root of the Beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

If, then, man’s nature be the mirror in which the Divine is reflected, how essential it becomes that the mirror should be clean.

A man whom the present writer knew once spent a winter at Rome. He had introductions to the inner circle of what is known as "Black" society — the friends and supporters of the Roman Catholic Church. The man saw nothing of the antiquities of the famous city, and gathered no intelligent views even regarding its modern life. He could talk fluently upon only one theme — the system of lotteries! He had looked on everything with a gambler’s eye. Thus, from the highest to the lowest interests of life, it is true that as a man is he sees. The gravest heresy is not error of doctrine, but impurity of life.

Such a reflection may often bring comfort to parents who are distressed to see their children — young, anxious-minded, inquiring — fall into doubt or even into denial of those things which are the most precious in life, the great truths of our faith. If a youth be sincere and simple-minded, and truth-loving and a clean liver, he will come through the shadows which rest for a time upon his belief and will emerge into the clear day. It is natural, and almost inevitable, that if a man keep himself in the atmosphere of God — in the life of righteousness — he will not always fail to recognise the Great Companion who is by his side.

Such an experience is abundantly confirmed. "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?" asked the Psalmist, "who shall stand in His holy place?" "He that hath clean hands and a pure heart,” was the answer. Remember any time in our national life when the best in our people has been awakened — such a time as that of the last great war— when the fire of patriotism burned clear, and sympathy and pity for the fallen and wounded soldiers were thrilling all hearts, and the country stood consciously in the presence of the great critical things of life: was it not true that our religious life also was keener, and we saw more manifestly the hand of Providence in history? With a purified heart we learned to see God?

Or let a man ask himself when his own faith was most vivid and he looked on life most in the light of God’s purity and truth? Was it not just when he was at his best: when sorrow had softened him or gifts of love had made him feel how good it was to be alive? Was it not when he stood by the cradle of his little child or by the coffin where the dear dead lay? Was it not when he had had the grace to overcome a great temptation or turn aside from a course he knew to be evil though it allured? Was it not when he was most a man, that then also he believed most firmly in God and saw Him near? It is with such experience that life has confirmed the blessing on the pure in heart.

Or why is it that, on the whole, women have been more devout believers than men, and have followed the Master with a simpler faith? Is it not just because, as a rule, women are not so coarse in thought or conduct as men, and they have found the blessing on the pure?

There is no use in illustrating the teaching more. But the closer we get to the facts of life the more certain we become of this great message of Jesus to men.

It is better to ask what is the road to purity of heart? How shall the condition of this Beatitude be gained?

The answer must often be in terms of that indirection which is so often the method of Jesus. Do not seek happiness, and you will be happy. Do not think about purity, and you will be pure. Christina Rossetti, when she set herself in one of her books to write about the Seventh Commandment, began with these suggestive words: "One legitimate mode of treating our present subject, and it may be not the least profitable mode, is to turn our hearts and thoughts away from it.”

It is never well to allow the imagination to dwell on evil things, even in the very process of condemning them. So strange a thing is human nature that a leering delight can be found in the exposure and punishment of wickedness, and a man may be a satyr in the guise of a militant saint. For most people it is better to occupy themselves more with positive good than with attacking wickedness. “Whatsoever things are pure. . . think on these things.” The  way to a pure heart is by the road of absorption in unselfish duty.

But a certain standard of simplicity and sincerity can be consciously set before one and sedulously cultivated. A quaint illustration of such a type of mind may be found in a letter which George Washington wrote to his friend Governor Morris, who was going to Europe. Among other commissions, Washington asked him “to buy him in Paris a flat gold watch; not the watch of a fool or of a man desirous to make a show, but of which the interior construction shall be extremely well cared for, and the exterior air very simple.” It is not a bad standard for a man as well as for a watch — "the interior well cared for, the exterior air very simple.” Washington himself was a noble example of such purity of heart. And the qualities of which his letter gave so quaint and significant a suggestion, have in some measure marked all men of the really highest type.

Prayer is, however, the great appointed instrument by which purity of heart is retained or recovered. "Create in me a clean heart, O God,” we are taught to ask. Here we are on the same level of ascertained experience, on which it is wise to keep while we are discussing a theme where the risk of unreality or sentimental vagueness is great. Let any man put to himself the question. How is the bad in me most subdued? How do I reach the loftiest aspirations? How do I come near the heart of God? It is by the avenue of Prayer.

When Jesus promised to the pure in heart that they should see God, He did not fix the time of the blessed vision. Is it to be here on the homely earth, or only beyond, where they gaze with other clearer eyes? Surely we should answer — and all that has been said has implied it — even here we may see God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” said our Lord Jesus. All good and holy men and women have some testimony to give of their knowledge of the heart of God in Jesus Christ. In the last century there were two teachers of the Church of England who live in a very sacred memory for their sincerity and guilelessness, their generous enthusiasm, their purity of heart. They were Dean Stanley and Charles Kingsley. Of Kingsley it is recorded that on his deathbed he seemed to have some glimpse of the Beatific Vision, for he exclaimed, "How beautiful is God.” And the last sermon which Stanley preached was on the text, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” He preached it on the 8th July 1 8 8 1; and he died on the 1 8 th of the same month. The last words of that sermon speak of "the single eye and the pure conscience which are an indispensable condition of having the doors of our minds open and the channel of communication kept free between us and the supreme and eternal fountain of all purity and of all goodness.” Thus, even here on earth, the pure in heart are blessed with such an inward gift of God as “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.” But we may well believe, also, that a fuller vision is yet to come. "Here we see through a glass darkly, here we know in part.” But when, through the training of the years the faculties of the spirit have been disciplined and enlarged, when death has removed every disturbing medium of sense, the Divine which is so often shadowy and indistinct will glow before surprised and adoring eyes in a beauty of which now we can hardly dream, and the Providence over life which speaks to us now so often only with hints obscure and difficult to interpret, will win us to an awed recognition of its mercy and its love.

“I’ll blest the hand that guided. I’ll bless the heart that planned.

When throned where glory dwelleth, in Immanuel’s land.”

"Then we shall know even as we are known.” "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

"Father of Jesus, love’s reward.

      What rapture will it be,

Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,

      And gaze and gaze on Thee.”

Well may St. John comment after He had made the glorious promise of that Vision of God: "Every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself even as He is pure.”