The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [35]
Loving your enemies in this scientific way is also the key to bodily health, without which it is impossible to possess it. The secret of physical well-being lies in the realization of Divine Life and Divine Love. All physical improvement follows upon this; it does not precede it. Today much is made of the influence of the glands on our bodily health, but our glands themselves are, all of them, governed entirely by our emotions, and thus the way to adjust and regulate the glands is by the cultivation of right feeling. Of course, this must be made to include subconscious feelings, and that can only be done by treatment.
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
(Matthew V)
This command of Jesus is one of the most tremendous things in the whole Bible. Consider carefully what it is that he is saying. He is commanding us to be perfect, even as God Himself is perfect; and, as we know that Jesus will not command the impossible, he has here given his authority to the doctrine that it is possible for man to become Divinely perfect. And, more than this, he is putting it forward as a thing that will have to be actually done. We see, therefore, from this that man cannot possibly be the miserable, hopeless, disinherited child of perdition that theology has too often represented him to be; but that he is even the very offspring of God—our Father which is in Heaven—and potentially Divine and perfect. As Jesus elsewhere puts it, quoting the ancient scripture: “I said, ye are gods; and all of you sons of the Most High.” He then added by way of emphasis: “And the scripture cannot be broken.”
Now, if we really are the children of God, capable of eternal and flawless perfection, there can be no real power in evil, not even in sin, to keep us permanently in bondage. That is to say, with the right method of working, it can be only a matter of time before we assume our true condition of spiritual salvation; so now let us lose no further time before commencing our upward march. Let us now—at this very moment, if we have not already done so—rise up, like the prodigal son amid the husks of materiality and limitation, and cry, with all confidence in the teachings and promises of Jesus: “I will arise and go unto my Father.”
Those who may be discouraged by a sense of their own unworthiness, or lack of understanding, and feel themselves to be indeed “a great way off,” should recollect that all the Great Spiritual Teachers have agreed that there is such a thing as “taking the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.”
CHAPTER 5
Treasure in Heaven
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy