For if our hearts be selfish, they cannot be pure. The pure in heart, is the same as the man whose eye is single, and that is the man who is not caring for himself, thinking of himself. If a man be thinking of himself, he will never enjoy life. The pure blessings which God has given him will be no blessings to him; as it is written, ‘He that saveth his life shall lose it.’ Do you not know that that is true? Do not the miseries of life (I do not mean the afflictions, like loss of friends or kin), but the miseries of life which make a man dark, and fretful, and prevent his enjoying God’s gifts—do they not come, nineteen-twentieths of them, from thinking about oneself; from lusting and longing after this and that; from spite, vanity, bad temper, wounded pride, disappointed covetousness? ‘I cannot get this or that; that money, that place; this or that fine thing or the other: and how can I be contented?’ There is a man whose heart is not pure. ‘That man has used me ill, and I cannot help thinking of it, brooding over it. I cannot forgive him. How can I be expected to forgive him?’ There is a man whose heart is not pure; and more, there is a man who is making himself miserable. See again, how a man may make marriage a curse to him instead of a blessing, without being unfaithful to his wife (which we all know to be simply abominable and unmanly, and far below anything of which I am talking now). And how? Simply by bad temper, vanity, greediness, and selfish love of his own dignity, his own pleasure, his own this, that, and the other. So, too, he may make his children a torment to him, instead of letting them be God’s lesson-book to him, in which he may see the likeness of the angels in heaven. He may make his wealth a continual anxiety to him: ay, he may make it, by ambition, covetousness, and wild speculation, the cause of his shame and ruin; if only his heart be not pure. Ay, there is not a blessing on earth which a man may not turn into a curse. There is not a good gift of God out of which a man may not get harm, if only his heart be not pure; as it is written, ‘To those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure: but even their mind and conscience are defiled.’ But defiled with what? Fouled with what? There is the question. Many answers have been invented by people who did not believe in that faithful and true God of whom I told you just now; people who fancied that this world was a bad world, and that God laid snares for his creatures and tempted his creatures. But the true answer is only to be got, like most true answers, by observing; by using our eyes and ears, and seeing what really makes people turn blessings into curses, and suck poison out of every flower. And that is, simply, self.