 all you have, trust to God for the future. Do not resist evil. Do nothing, be nothing, sit and wait for a handout."
How much better it would have been if Jesus had said, "Be thrifty, save for your old age and to uplift yourselves from poverty.
Look to the future, famines and scarcity may come, be prepared for emergency, and for help to your brothers." That would have meant happiness and progress on earth.
Christ's reference to the birds of the fields would indicate that they had nothing to do but eat, but the poor little things have to scratch and fight for their food, watch for hawks and cats and freeze and shiver in the rain and the wind. Christ would put man back on the animal plane with his philosophy. Who indeed wants to be a beast of the field, fearing the hunter, eternally suffering from vermin, scarcity and disease, chased from one hill to the other, fighting to the death for the right to satisfy their mating instincts?
The reference to a man with one eye having a whole body full of light must refer to something of the superstitions of the times; the reference to the evil eye apparently bears this out, otherwise the reference to the one-eyed man being full of light is meaningless. It would be a sorry race if we followed Christ's orders "to take no thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat, or drink or wear," etc.
Men should do just the opposite; they should know what is best for them to eat and drink and should provide for what is needed for them to wear. No wonder Christianity has produced nations of loafers and beggars. These arguments of Christ were spectacular, uttered with the sincerity of a paranoiac, and they attracted the poor classes who were uneducated and stupid.
Take no thought of the morrow. What a terrible philosophy! Only by taking thought and preparing for the morrow does humanity progress. But here again do we have the paradox, Christ thinking only of the morrow after death, preaching it all the time, yet preaching against it here.
He criticizes hypocrites who criticize others, while they themselves have motes in their eye. But even if one does have faults, if he can improve conditions by calling other wrongs to the peoples' attention, it may be for the benefit of humanity.
Then the story of casting pearls before swine reminds us that often fake pearls are cast before real swine. But it is a meaningless, rather childish parable. Then he says "knock and it shall be opened to you, ask and ye shall receive," and similar instructions for getting what we want. But it takes more than that to achieve success and obtain what we need. If he referred to heavenly advice, it is true it may be had, even without the asking, but is of no practical benefit.
Then he warns against false prophets, as all prophets warn against all other prophets, each claiming divine authority. He promises security to those who follow his sayings and threatens with destruction those who do not follow them.
Here we have a jumble of sayings which could come from no one but a fanatic. They are contrary to reason and common sense. They have been held as the grandest sermon ever preached, as the essence of Christianity. Yet few men have taken time to read the actual words.
The Sermon on the Mount appears to be the expression of a paranoiac. The commands are childish. They preach a philosophy of morbidity as against happiness on earth. They are impractical. They present a program of despair, of inability to cope with the world and to improve it. They hinder progress. The practical result of them is that with all the power needed, neither the omnipotent God behind them nor the Son who promulgated them has proved their practicability in a trial over the last 1900 years.
The sermon is contrary to right, justice, and fairness. It is a plan of depravity; instead of making men of humanity, it seeks to make hopeless beggars of the race, indifferent to this life, waiting and praying for eternal happiness; a bunch of loafers, not willing to work for what they need.
The only good point in the whole sermon is the reference to the Golden Rule, "Do a