Philochristus: Memoirs of a Disciple of the LordAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Religion
Philochristus: Memoirs of a Disciple of the Lord
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Christian fiction; Jesus Christ -- Fiction
of the poor only, but of every one that is in need of aught, that is to
say, of every one of the children of men: wherefore whatsoever is given to
men, is given to God, and from God cometh back multiplied to the giver.
Howbeit, we were neither to give alms, nor to do aught else, for hope of
reward; but only out of love.
Concerning citizenship in the Kingdom and how men should become citizens
therein, he spake little to us, as being already citizens therein: save
only this, that whoso would come, must come unto him; and through him, as
through a door, they should pass into the Kingdom. And behold, the Kingdom
was no other than a family, wherein God was at once Father and King, and
all men were as children of the Father in Heaven. For the foundation of
all was, that the heart and not the hands shaped the goodness and badness
of all deeds, and made men to become citizens of the Kingdom: wherefore
the heart and not the hands must be purified; nor could any be in truth
citizens of the Kingdom except they had the thought of the Kingdom always
in their hearts, so that their hopes and treasures were all stored up, not
in the banks of money‐changers, but in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Then he spake of the exceeding joys of the citizens of the Kingdom of God,
and how they are free from all troubles and all disquietudes. But none, he
said, could serve God and Mammon at one time; neither was it possible to
serve God aright and yet to be distracted and torn asunder by cares
concerning meat or raiment. Hereat the companion of Eliezer murmured
again, saying that Jesus had before spoken blasphemously in joining the
forgiving of sins by God with the forgiving of sins by men, and now he had
spoken as a madman, in forbidding us to be careful about food and raiment;
“Can a man sit,” said he, “and search the Law, and not know whence he is
to eat, and drink, and to be clad?” Now whether Jesus perceived his
murmuring I know not: but he pointed, first upwards to the birds (for even
at that instant there was a flight of pelicans above us) and then downward
to the flowers, which bestrewed the side of the brook, and he said that
our Father in Heaven fed the birds and clothed the flowers; and should He
not much more care for us? Then he bade us seek first the Kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and all things else should be added unto us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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