Article December 25, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Hugh C. Wallace, William F. Stevenson, Theodore Roosevelt

The Rev. Hobart Clark says in The Christian Register:—

"Men felt then the truth of what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. They caught a glimpse of his meaning; yet, failing to understand it exactly, the Christian Churches, while talking about the riches of the kingdom of heaven and insisting upon their value, have for centuries done this in such a way as to make them seem far away and quite unreal, if not purely imaginary. The Churches have talked about these riches as if they had no place in the world we live in now and no part in man's present life. The Church has too often said, not 'All things are yours,' but 'All things shall be yours in some far-away heaven of the future, provided you fulfil the necessary conditions, and claim little or nothing here or now.' That Lesson was not what Jesus meant. He was trying to bring the life of those poor people to a higher level by showing them their real riches, by helping them to see how much they had while apparently having nothing. He spoke in the present, not in the future tense. He did not say, 'Blessed shall be the poor they shall have the kingdom of heaven.' He was not making a promise: he was pointing to a fact. He said, 'Blessed are the poor,' and then he added 'in spirit,' to make his meaning plainer, because 'theirs is the kingdom of heaven' here and now. He who had nowhere to lay his head was a rich man: the kingdom of heaven was his, he knew it, and was speaking to them out of his own knowledge and experience. He wanted them to share that experience with all its unconsidered wealth, which was theirs already if they could but accept it and enjoy it, their material poverty being no sufficient reason why they should not do so.

"I sometimes doubt if Jesus was the original author of that story about Dives and Lazarus. If he was, the story itself must have been misunderstood and misinterpreted. No one ever saw more clearly than he did that the man whose soul is alive within him does not have to die and go to some far-away heaven, in order to obtain his inheritance: he is in possession of it here and now, if he sees and cares to claim his birthright. The nominal owners of this world are not its real possessors."

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