The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [45]
Always remember that the only thought that you need to concern yourself with is the present one. The thoughts of yesterday or of last year do not matter now, because if you can get the present thought right it will make everything else right here and now. The best way to prepare for tomorrow is to make today’s consciousness serene and harmonious. All other good things will follow upon that.
Never go delving into your mind to look for troubles to pray or treat about. Deal faithfully with those that bring themselves to your attention, and hidden things will be taken care of.
In the same spirit, Scientific Christianity discourages too much consideration of the next plane, and of afterdeath conditions. Such preoccupations are too often but a flight from the realities of this life and of everyday problems that should be faced and solved here—not evaded or, what is the same thing, postponed in thought.
We are to dwell upon Life, and not death, and to concentrate upon making our demonstration here and now.
CHAPTER 6
With What Measure Ye Mete
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
(MATTHEW VII)
THIS section of the Sermon on the Mount consists of five short verses, and only about one hundred words, and yet it is hardly too much to say that at its simple face value it is the most staggering document ever presented to mankind. In these five verses we are told more about the nature of man and the meaning of life, and the importance of conduct, and the art of living, and the secret of happiness and success, and the way out of trouble, and the approach to God, and the emancipation of the soul, and the salvation of the world, than all the philosophers and the theologians and the savants put together have told us—for it explains the Great Law. It is vastly more important that a man, and still more that a child, should be taught the meaning of these five verses than that he should learn anything else that is taught in schools or colleges. There is nothing to be found in any of the ordinary courses of study; there is nothing to be learned in any library, or in any laboratory that is one-millionth part as important as the information contained herein. If it were ever possible to justify the fanatical saying “Burn the rest of the books, for it is all in this one,” it would be in reference to those words.
Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. If the average man understood for a single moment the meaning of these words, and really believed them to be true, they would immediately revolutionize his whole life from top to bottom; turn his everyday conduct inside out, and so change him that, in a comparatively short space of time, his closest friends would hardly know him. Whether he were the Prime Minister in the Cabinet or the man in the street, this understanding would turn the world upside down for him, and, because the thing is infectious beyond computing, it would turn the world upside down for many, many others as well.
Again and again we are struck with amazement, upon rereading this Sermon on the Mount with a fresh mind, to find how completely its most challenging statements have been quietly ignored in practice by the bulk of the Christian world. If one did not know for a fact that these words are constantly heard in public, and read in private, by millions and millions