The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [11]
The fact is that when correctly understood, the teaching of Jesus is found to be not only true but exceedingly practicable; indeed it is the most practicable of all doctrines. We find then that he was no sentimental dreamer, no mere dealer in empty platitudes, but the unflinching realist that only a great mystic can be; and the whole essence of his teaching of its practical application is summed up in this text.
This Beatitude is among the half-dozen most important verses in the Bible. When you possess the spiritual meaning of this text you have the Secret of Dominion—the secret of overcoming every kind of difficulty. It is literally the Key of Life. It is the Jesus Christ Message reduced to a single sentence. This gnomic saying is actually the Philosopher’s Stone of the Alchemists that turns the base metal of limitation and trouble into the gold of “comfort” or true harmony.
We notice that there are two polar words in the text—“meek” and “earth.” They are both used in a special and highly technical sense, and they have to be unveiled before the wonderful meaning that underlies them can be found. First, of all, the word “earth” in the Bible does not mean merely this terrestrial globe. It really means manifestation. Manifestation or expression is the result of a cause. A cause has to be expressed or manifested before we can know anything about it; and, contrariwise, every expression or manifestation has to have a cause. Now you learn in Divine Metaphysics, and particularly in the Sermon on the Mount, that all causation is mental, and that your body and all your affairs—your home, your business, all your experience—are but the manifestation of your own mental states. The fact that you are quite unconscious of most of your mental states does not signify; because they are there, nevertheless, in your subconscious mind, notwithstanding the fact that you have now forgotten them, or never were aware of them at all.
In other words, your “earth” means the whole of your outer experience, and to “inherit the earth” means to have dominion over that outer experience; that is to say, to have power to bring your conditions of life into harmony and true success. “All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” “His soul shall dwell at ease, and His seed (prayers) shall inherit the earth.” “The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice.” So we see that when the Bible talks about the earth—possessing the earth, governing the earth, making the earth glorious, and so forth—it is referring to the conditions of our lives from our bodily health outwards to the farthest point in our affairs. So this text undertakes to tell us how we may possess, or govern, to be masters of our own lives and destinies.
Now let us see how it is to be done. The Beatitude says that dominion, that is, power over the conditions of our lives, is to be obtained in a certain way, and in the most unexpected of all ways—by nothing less than meekness. The fact is, however, that this word “meekness” also is used in a special and technical sense. Its true significance has nothing in common with the meaning it now bears in modern English. Actually, there are few more unpleasant qualities in human nature than the one that is nowadays denoted by the word “meekness.” To a modern reader, the “meek” suggests a mean-spirited creature, devoid alike of courage and self-respect, of no use to himself or anyone else, crawling over the face of the earth like a worm, and probably hypocritical and mean as well. It