have you pure in heart, eager after righteousness, a very child of his
father in heaven.




_GOD'S FAMILY._

'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' 'Blessed are
they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled.' 'Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the
children of God.'--_Matthew_ v. 8, 6, 9.


The cry of the deepest in man has always been, to see God. It was the
cry of Moses and the cry of Job, the cry of psalmist and of prophet; and
to the cry, there has ever been faintly heard a far approach of coming
answer. In the fullness of time the Son appears with the proclamation
that a certain class of men shall behold the Father: 'Blessed are the
pure in heart,' he cries, 'for they shall see God.' He who saw God, who
sees him now, who always did and always will see him, says, 'Be pure,
and you also shall see him.' To see God was the Lord's own, eternal, one
happiness; therefore he knew that the essential bliss of the creature is
to behold the face of the creator. In that face lies the mystery of a
man's own nature, the history of a man's own being. He who can read no
line of it, can know neither himself nor his fellow; he only who knows
God a little, can at all understand man. The blessed in Dante's Paradise
ever and always read each other's thoughts in God. Looking to him, they
find their neighbour. All that the creature needs to see or know, all
that the creature can see or know, is the face of him from whom he came.