The Beatitude of the Pure in Heart
P.C. Barker Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. If the foregoing Beatitude were one that turned its face principally to man, and looked as it were fixedly on him, yet with most undoubted aspect Godward, this, on the other hand, the eighth in order, must certainly be held (and all the more so by force of the latter clause of it)to place us face to face with God - how certainly, also, to the subsequent advantage of our fellow-man none can doubt. Simple as are the words of this Beatitude, the central word, that one on which the meaning of all hinges, may be rendered yet a little more expressively and unmistakably by the word "clean," which is the Authorized Version rendering ten times out of the twenty-eight times of its occurrence in the New Testament. Three other times is this "clean heart" spoken of, viz.: "The end of the commandment is charity out of a clean heart" (1 Timothy 1:5); "With them that call on the Lord out of a clean heart" (2 Timothy 2:22); "Love one another with a clean heart fervently" (1 Peter 1:22). And in addition twice is a "clean conscience" spoken of, viz.: "Holding the mystery of the faith in a clean conscience" (1 Timothy 3:9); "God, whom I serve from my forefathers with a clean conscience" (2 Timothy 1:3). It is a ." clean linen cloth" in which the sacred body is wrapped (Matthew 27:59); the "seven angels" are "clothed in clean and white linen" (Revelation 15:6); the "Lamb's wife" is "arrayed in fine linen, clean and white" (Revelation 19:8); and "the armies, which followed the Word of God," were "clothed in fine linen, white and clean" (Revelation 19:14). If it were possible to hesitate as to what "the pure heart" of this Beatitude might mean, few could hesitate as to the chief meaning of a "clean" heart. I. THE CLEAN IN HEART ARE THOSE WHOSE AFFECTIONS, THOUGHTS, WISHES, ARE CLEAN. David's prayer, "Create in me a clean heart, O God," is ever a most practical commentary on the too solemn, too dangerous subject. And St. Peter's earnest entreaty to those whom he counts even as "dearly beloved," that they "abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul," is another. This unclean heart is described by the lips of Jesus Christ himself: "Out of it proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" (Matthew 15:19). And the description is followed on by St. Paul, when he speaks of the "works of the flesh" (Galatians 5:19). Human affections, pure, clean, innocent (partial and imperfect and temporary though they be), lead on to the Divine and eternal; but human passions and the desires of the flesh are the worst foes to the spirit. Into the heart contaminated by entertaining such guests, higher and purer cannot, will not, come. It cannot be pronounced "blessed;" it cannot be "blessed." It has its own eyes indeed, but they are not eyes with which God can be seen. Purity of heart must mean first of all pure thoughts, pure desires, pure affections. Love of the visible, the near, the present, always takes advantage to hinder the love of God, but impure affections fail not to destroy it absolutely. II. THE PURE IN HEART ARE THOSE WHOSE HIGHER JUDGMENT, BETTER FEELING, TRUER VISION, ARE NOT DISTURBED BY THAT ILLUSION OF SELF-INTEREST WHICH HAS SO BRITTLE, AND AT THE BEST SO BRIEF, A TENURE OF LIFE. The larger examples of the disastrous interferences of what for a while wears all the semblance of expedience, policy, self-interest, and even justifiable self-regard, speak distinctly for themselves when they occur. But the amazing, the incredible work of mischief, invisibly, sometimes unconsciously, rarely enough confessedly, piled up with the effect of crushing unsuspectedly all that is best in the individual heart, it would seem only the plunge into the eternal world can reveal, whether to others or to the victims themselves, whose name is legion. Souls could not have been gambled away more mercilessly or in more ruinous number than they have by these ways committed suicide. They have melted down like the snow, and vanished like phantom troops. The pure in heart know and abide by the right, though it be dressed in rags, and they have no fellowship with the plausible, though arrayed in purple. The pure in heart have an instinct, which holds them faithful adherents to that higher judgment, that better feeling, that truer vision of which the world thinks so little, and which it sells for a delusive nothing. A pure heart believes in it all, without a sidelong glance and without" looking back;" guides itself by what it knows to be the right, and brushes off sophistry as it would a detected traitor-friend. That heart is training to "see God." III. THE PURE IN HEART ARE THOSE WHOSE HEART ANSWERS AS FAR AS POSSIBLE TO PURE MOTIVE ONLY. Motives are those hidden impulses and inducements of individual actions which so soon usurp the authority of habitual guides of our conduct. Perhaps, to aid our feeble conception of a subject little within our grasp, we might imagine that our heart in its first form was just the scene and domain of feeling - feeling blessedly gentle like infants' breathing; blessedly innocent, that knew no evil; exquisitely sensitive, and - grateful, it knew not why nor to whom. In the midst of that calm scene the plant of thought grew up, inevitably coloured with colour's every tint by feeling. It was no clear thought of reason or of the intellect alone. It was warm with the warmth of human life, and with all its mystery of individual hope, wish, and inclinings. This peculiar domain of feeling and thought, the human soul, became the main place of the originating of action - the fruitful, too prolific seed-bed of all those deeds of the body for which, when we "all appear at the judgment-seat of Christ, we must receive... according to that done, whether good or bad." Now, that is a motive which determines feeling and thought to shape itself into action, and which decides its form. Whence those motives come (so multitudinous, so various, so mixed in their character), often enough the heart itself has lost the stern simplicity to know, and no earthly judge can safely pronounce. The complication has become what human skill cannot disentangle. Even the uncharitable and censorious world has, to a proverb, professed at any rate to renounce the judging of men's motives. None the less realities, yet are they fearful ghostly realities to summon before our bar, indeed I Grant all this, yet every one of us knows, if he will say it, whether those inducements of his actions within him are or are not honest, kind, useful, right, unpoisoned by absolute selfishness, fit to be brought to the light, good, holy - in a word, whether they are "pure," or prejudiced by every degree of the taintedness of impurity, from the least to the greatest. To set this house in order is indeed a task. To suffer, to harbour in it no ill motive, to encourage each better and higher motive, to keep a "clean conscience," the fairest flower and fruit of which is "charity" toward the motives of others, stern strictness toward our own, or humbly, earnestly to try and pray to do this, as far as it is not" impossible with man," is to have, or to approach toward having, the "pure heart," which begins even now to "see God." CONCLUSION. Dwell upon the very encouraging light thrown on human nature, and on its future - that the vision of God is suggested as granted even here to a growing moral likeness to him, and a nearing moral sympathy with him; while every present and necessarily partial vision of him here is an earnest of the vision of full fruition to came. Partial though the clearest, brightest, best vision here confessedly is, yet is it not the deepest and purest bliss to be had? To this said the reputed Chrysosom of old, "So far as any one has rescued himself from evil, and works things that are good, so far does he see God, either hardly, or fully, or sometimes, or always, according to the capabilities of human nature." - B. Parallel Verses KJV: Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. WEB: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.