2.

As for you, when you hear the Saviour’s counsel: “if thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come follow me,” ¹ you translate his words into action; and baring yourself to follow the bare cross ² you mount Jacob’s ladder the easier for carrying nothing. Your dress changes with the change in your convictions, and you aim at no showy shabbiness which leaves your purse as full as before. No, with pure hands and a clear conscience you make it your glory that you are poor both in spirit and in deed. There is nothing great in wearing a sad or a disfigured face, in simulating and in showing off fasts, or in wearing a cheap cloak while you retain a large income. When Crates the Theban—a millionaire of days gone by—was on his way to Athens to study philosophy, he cast away untold gold in the belief that wealth could not be compatible with virtue. What a contrast he offers to us, the disciples of a poor Christ, who cram our pockets with gold and cling under pretext of almsgiving to our old riches. How can we faithfully distribute what belongs to another when we thus timidly keep back what is our own? ³ When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting. What is praiseworthy is not to have been at Jerusalem but to have lived a good life while there. ⁴ The city which we are to praise and to seek is not that which has slain the prophets ⁵ and shed the blood of Christ, but that which is made glad by the streams of the river, ⁶ which is set upon a mountain and so cannot be hid, ⁷ which the apostle declares to be a mother of the saints, ⁸ and in which he rejoices to have his citizenship with the righteous. ⁹

P. 120 3. In speaking thus I am not laying myself open to a charge of inconsistency or condemning the course which I have myself taken. It is not, I believe, for nothing that I, like Abraham, have left my home and people. But I do not presume to limit God’s omnipotence or to restrict to a narrow strip of earth Him whom the heaven cannot contain. Each believer is judged not by his residence in this place or in that but according to the deserts of his faith. The true worshippers worship the Father neither at Jerusalem nor on mount Gerizim; for “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” ¹⁰“Now the spirit bloweth where it listeth,” ¹¹ and “the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.” ¹² When the fleece of Judæa was made dry although the whole world was wet with the dew of heaven, ¹³ and when many came from the East and from the West ¹⁴ and sat in Abraham’s bosom: ¹⁵ then God ceased to be known in Judah only and His name to be great in Israel alone; ¹⁶ the sound of the apostles went out into all the earth and their words into the ends of the world. ¹⁷ The Saviour Himself speaking to His disciples in the temple ¹⁸ said: “arise, let us go hence,” ¹⁹ and to the Jews: “your house is left unto you desolate.” ²⁰ If heaven and earth must pass away, ²¹ obviously all things that are earthly must pass away also. Therefore the spots which witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection profit those only who bear their several crosses, who day by day rise again with Christ, and who thus shew themselves worthy of an abode so holy. Those who say “the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,” ²² should give ear to the words of the apostle: “ye are the temple of the Lord,” ²³ and the Holy Ghost “dwelleth in you.” ²⁴ Access to the courts of heaven is as easy from Britain as it is from Jerusalem; for “the kingdom of God is within you.” ²⁵ Antony and the hosts of monks who are in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and Armenia, have never seen Jerusalem: and the door of Paradise is opened for them at a distance from it. The blessed Hilarion, though a native of and a dweller in Palestine, only set eyes on Jerusalem for a single day, not wishing on the one hand when he was so near to neglect the holy places, nor yet on the other to appear to confine God within local limits. From the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine—a period of about one hundred and eighty years ²⁶—the spot which had witnessed the resurrection was occupied by a figure of Jupiter; while on the rock where the cross had stood, a marble statue of Venus was set up by the heathen and became an object of worship. The original persecutors, indeed, supposed that by polluting our holy places they would deprive us of our faith in the passion and in the resurrection. Even my own Bethlehem, as it now is, that most venerable spot in the whole world of which the psalmist sings: “the truth hath sprung out of the earth,” ²⁷ was overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz, ²⁸ that is of Adonis; and in the very cave ²⁹ where the infant Christ had uttered His earliest cry lamentation was made for the paramour of Venus. ³⁰