CHAPTER 98.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Levi
The Sermon on the Mount, continued. Jesus reveals to the twelve the spiritual aspects of the seventh, eighth and tenth Commandments.
The law forbids adultery; but in the eyes of law adultery is an overt act, the satisfaction of the sensuous self outside the marriage bonds.
2 Now, marriage in the sight of law is but a promise made by man and woman, by the sanction of a priest, to live for aye in harmony and love.
3 No priest nor officer has power from God to bind two souls in wedded love.
4 What is the marriage tie? Is it comprised in what a priest or officer may say?
5 Is it the scroll on which the officer or priest has written the permission for the two to live in marriage bonds?
6 Is it the promise of the two that they will love each other until death?
7 Is love a passion that is subject to the will of man?
8 Can man pick up his love, as he would pick up precious gems, and lay it down, or give it out to any one?
9 Can love be bought and sold like sheep?
10 Love is the power of God that binds two souls and makes them one; there is no power on earth that can dissolve the bond.
11 The bodies may be forced apart by man or death for just a little time; but they will meet again.
12 Now, in this bond of God we find the marriage tie; all other unions are but bonds of straw, and they who live in them commit adultery,
13 The same as they who satisfy their lust without the sanction of an officer or priest.
14 But more than this; the man or woman who indulges lustful thoughts commits adultery.
15 Whom God has joined together man cannot part; whom man has joined together live in sin.
16 Upon a table of the law, the great lawgiver wrote, Thou shalt not steal.
17 Before the eyes of law a man to steal must take a thing that can be seen with eyes of flesh, without the knowledge or consent of him to whom the thing belongs.
18 But, lo, I say that he who in his heart desires to possess that which is not his own, and would deprive the owner of the thing without his knowledge or consent, is in the sight of God, a thief.
19 The things that men see not with eyes of flesh are of more worth than are the things that man can see.
20 A man’s good name is worth a thousand mines of gold, and he who says a word or does a deed that injures or defames that name has taken what is not his own, and is a thief.
21 Upon a table of the law we also read; Thou shalt not covet anything.
22 To covet is an all-consuming wish to have what is not right for one to have.
23 And such a wish, within the spirit of the law, is theft.