Then take the case of the man who was lying at the pool of Bethesda,
and was reported as cured. Jesus meets him, after a good deal of
question and criticism on the part of the Jews, and says, "Now you have
been healed, see to it that you sin no more, lest a worse thing come to
you," seeming to imply again that sin might be punished by lameness, by
affliction of this kind or that.
So it seems to me that we do not get, even in the New Testament,
entirely free from this old conception. Indeed, there are the verses
which I read as a part of our lesson from the fifth chapter of Matthew,
one of which for a clear or more spiritual insight I have quoted as a
part of my text, "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they shall be filled" with what? Filled with
righteousness; not filled with health, external prosperity, many
children, friends, political position, honor. Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall what? See God. "Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are they that are persecuted for
righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
You see these beatitudes strike down to the eternal principle of
natural, necessary causation and result, just as does the last verse
which I have quoted from Galatians, "Be not deceived; God is not
mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," not
something else, that. Here is a clear and explicit annunciation of the
eternal, universal law of cause and effect, of the idea that those
things which happen are not arbitrary infliction, but natural and
necessary result.
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