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THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
285 stantly quarrelling with the Pharisees, is to insult our own understanding more than anything else under the sun. Obviously, the Kingdom of Heaven was not meant to be a place where wretchedness and imperfection could revel, or disease display its disgusting ugliness.
'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' not because of their material poverty, but because of their deliberate acceptance of it on spiritual grounds. It is those and only those who are the poor in spirit that will be ad. mitted to the Kingdom. There is no room for poverty indiscriminately there, but those who remain content with their lot, and those who are poor in spirit, that is, not arrogant but peaceful, not easily offended, but humble, and, above all, those who are happy and cheerful and virtuous are alone to be blessed. Heaven is to be claimed by the poor, the hungry, and the thirsty only when the hunger and thirst are for righteousness. There is no room there for any one who has a grumbling disposition in the least. The principle illustrated is that, if one longs not for material things, and renounces them by choice (not by force of circumstances over which he has no control), he is blessed, for the renunciation of wealth is a means of attaining to the emotion of bliss. Search for righteousness, provided it is sincere, procures peace and freedom from desire, and enables the hidden state of ananda to come into manifestation. For, except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' From the earliest time when Man applied his mind to explore and lay bare the mysteries of Time, Space and Existence,
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