The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 47
Forty-seventh Day
The wonderful effects and invincible strength of Jesus Christ's doctrine. — Matt. vii. 28, 29.
THINK over this teaching of Our Lord’s. It is so beautiful and so solid that it calls forth admiration from the whole world. For who could help admiring its purity, grandeur and practicalness? It has converted- the world; it has peopled deserts 5 it has caused thousands of martyrs — of every condition, age and sex — to shed their life-blood. It has made riches and pleasures contemptible, and caused the honours of this world to lose their glory. Men, by its means, have become angels, and have gone so far as to put God Himself before them as their model. Who, then, can fail to admire this lovely and ravishing doctrine?
But admiring is not enough. ‘ Jesus teaches as having power ’: everything must give way before His teaching; all human pride must bow the head.
May God preserve you from a timid teacher, who dares not tell you plain truths, or who flatters your defects like the Scribes and Pharisees, who thought only of pleasing the people and not of correcting them! Beg of God to give you a teacher who will speak powerfully and with effect, and not spare your vices: — for on this your conversion depends.