The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [58]
Because human life and human character are so many-sided, the Bible approaches every problem from several different angles. This section of the Sermon teaches another very important lesson too; namely, that the only true way of bringing about anything is by the Practice of the Presence of God. This is the only way in which permanent results can be obtained. Temporary alterations in conditions may be achieved by will power, but they are only temporary, and sooner or later anything that seems to have been accomplished in this way will disappear again, leaving everything worse than it was before. A great fortune, for instance, may be built up by will power alone, but money thus acquired sooner or later takes wings unto itself and flies away again, leaving its deluded victim poorer than ever. Such a person knows not the Truth of Being, and therefore it knows him not, and cannot help him. Dramatically stated, in the Oriental way, this becomes: I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
When a person has made such a mistake as this the thing for him to do is promptly to discontinue trying to work without God, whereupon his mistake will be forgiven, as all mistakes are, as soon as we repent of them. Then he should immediately begin to work for supply on the Spiritual Basis, claiming God as his source and realizing the bounty of God as his. Thus he will build up a true prosperity consciousness, and when this is done he never can be impoverished.
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his home upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
(Matthew VII)
The Sermon concludes with one of those illustrations that for simplicity, directness, and graphic power are unmatched outside the teaching of Jesus. No one who has read this parable of the two houses can ever forget it. It warns us once again of the vanity of precept without practice; of the deadly peril of those who know the Truth, or at least know about it, without honestly trying as well as they can to put it into practice. One could almost say, better never to have heard of the Truth at all, than to know of it and not try to live it.
One of the very oldest and most important symbols for the human soul is that of a building, sometimes a dwelling house, and sometimes a Temple, which man is occupied in building. Man the Builder is as familiar a character in the Occult Tradition as man the Shepherd, or man the Fisherman, or man the King, as we found him in an earlier section. The first thing that has to be done by the builder of a house is to select a sound foundation, for, without that, it matters not how skillfully and conscientiously the building is put up, it will collapse under the first serious storm that comes along. Jesus, we remember, was brought up in the home and workshop of a carpenter, who, in that time and place, would be a builder too, as he still often is in remote country places among ourselves; and this illustration is one that would immediately occur to him. On the shifting sands of the desert it is impossible to build anything at all, and so there people have to dwell in tents. When the Oriental intends to put up a permanent structure he looks about for a rock, and builds upon that. Now the Rock is one of the Bible terms for the Christ, and the implication is very obvious. The Christ Truth is the one and only foundation upon which we can build the Temple of