The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-05-30

1
| kingdom Of heaven.-Matt. V, 20.
| And yet the Scribes and Pharisees were
most respectable people They belonged TO
the very best society. They were graced
! with all the culture of the time
They were conspicuous, too, for the more
homely virtues of a careful and even pune
tilious morality. They kept the ten COM
mandments, and a hundred others also of
their own devising. They were esteemed
by all their neighbors. People greeted them
in the streets and markets with high re-
spect, and gave them titles of reverence.
To their social station and their integ-
rity of life they added a degree of learning
at which their fellow-citizens were filled
with humanity and wonder They We're
men Of books in a day when that was
singular distinction.
And to these admirable qualities of
social, commercial and literary sort, they
added a virtue which is sometimes absent
to-day from the lives of those who are
greatly interested III society, in business,
or In books; they were exceedingly reig-
ious. Very regular at church, profoundly
interested in all ecclesiastical matters fast
ing with great strictness on all the peni-
tential days, and observing the festivals of
the calendar with unvarying punctuality
they were devoted to the church as an in
stitution; did all they could to maintain its
dignity and influence in the community and
were on the alert to get new people-of
desirable sort-into it,
And this devotion they further empha-
sized by the munifcence of their gifts for
religious purposes. They made generous
subscriptions, and were important financial
supporters of the church; in fact every
I |, xl~-l.
tenth part of all their income.
There is a prevalent idea that all really
respectable people will be saved. If they
belong to the church and attend to the du-
ties which it prescribes they are accounted
to be sure of salvation. What, indeed, it
is argued does the Lord require of us but
to conduct ourselves with decent propriety
and go to church on Sunday?
And even if they stay away their emf
nent responsibility it is thought, will have
great weight with God. There are many
who find it easier to believe the Athanasan
creed than to persuade themselves that
among those who are rejected in the day of
final crisis and settlement, there will be
any wel-dressed, well-educated and we'll
behaved people.
The example of the Scribes and Pharisees
may well give rise to serious reflection. 1t
is possible to be in the pleasantest society,"
and to be gifted with the finest culture
and to live uprightly, and to be identified
with the institutions of religion, and yet
to be altogether disapproved of by the
Lord Jesus Christ.
The phrase 1.-The kingdom of heaven"
which is used in the hard saying of the
text, is not, however, to be interpreted
solely in connection with the life to come.
The Masters words mean something here
and now earth
Jesus comes to establish among men an
ideal state, to begin new and better way
of living, to set up amongst us that which
we may call, we please. either the
kingdom of heaven, or the church, the
cooperative commonwealth. And that ideal
social state does not wait until the day of
doom. 1t began when Jesus came and it
is realized in the company of those who
are honestly trying to live in his spirit. We
pray every day in the Lords prayer that
it may increase till it has come with pow
err in the hearts and lives of all men all
the world over; and what we ask is just
that the will of God may be done on earth
as it is in heaven. When that prayer is
| answered the kingdom of heaven is estab-
lished.
In that life God will be our king, and
loyalty to him will be an initial and es-
sential element. Jesus Christ will be our
example, and in the following of that ex-
ample we will love our fellow-men as He
loves us, and will manifest that love, as
He did, by our ministration to all whom
we can help, and by our glad self-sacrifice
for the good of others.
When Jesus says that rich man will
find it hard to get into the kingdom of
heaven, he is not thinking of a place with
walls, but of a way of living, of the ideal
social state; and he means that this ideal
life requires so much from those who have
great privileges and necessitates so rad-
cal a change in the whole current and in
tention of their daily behavior, that a great
many persons will initiate the rich young
man who made the great refusal They
have become rich by a process of diligent-
ly looking out for their own interests. How
hardly shall they now begin to care with
equal diligence for the interests of others?
Thus it is that He pronounces the right
| eousness of the Scribes and Pharisees in
adequate, and declares that no one is ready
to enter into the ideal social state unless
he has a righteousness of a different kind
What, then. was the matter with the
Scribes and Pharisees?
We read: '"They trusted in themselves
that they were righteous" and were there
by arrested in their development; there was
no prospect of growth betterment in
them they were fatally satisfied. Again,
they set more store by mint, anise and
cummin''-the formalities of religion-than
by the weighty matters of the moral law;
accounting little things to be of more value
than great things, setting the material be-
fore the spiritual, and thus destroying the
right perspective of life. Then again, they
cared more for the immediate and audible
applause of men than for the secret bene-
diction of God. But, above all, theirs was a
selfish righteousness. while the only right
eousness which counts with God is a social
righteousness.
The difference is simply that they who
are righteous in the selfish way are de-
voted altogether to the living of their own
lives and to the saving of their own souls:
while they who are righteous in the social
way are occupied in ministration and think
of other people first.
There are quite respectable people, who
have done nothing that was particularly
wrong but who, on the other hand, are
condemned by the record OF their I'M
used opportunities. They might have