“NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.”
By Canon Farrar
OUR Lord was pleased with the candor, the wisdom, the enthusiasm, of the young man’s reply. It was his special tenderness, it was his immense love, that he would never break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. In his infinite holiness, in his heavenly innocence, he did not loathe the leper’s touch or the harlot’s tears. Though these scribes and Pharisees would have embittered to the very dregs any life less noble than his, he could praise even his worst foes, and kindly and gently said to the scribe, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of Heaven.” To such a nature as that of the scribe—a nature not ungenerous, if very faulty; not unenlightened, though much misled—how precious, how healing, must these words have been! Oh, let us not be so afraid of words of honest praise and hearty encouragement! They re-inspire the fading effort; they re-invigorate the trembling arm; they fall like the dew of heaven upon the fainting soul. The sunbeam touches the mountain, and at its touch the heavy load of winter, which the hurricane could not dislodge, melts and slips insensibly away, and where but yesterday was snow, to-day is green grass and gentian flower. It is even so with words of sympathy, which are so rare, alas! while they can cheer or bless, but which, when they are useless, fall thick and fast over the buried dust. But Christ was not thus jealous of making anyone a trifle happier. He knew how to give needed encouragement and generous praise. “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona;” “Behold an Israelite indeed;” “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel;” “She hath done what she could;” “Thou art not far from the kingdom of Heaven!”—such are a few of Christ’s words of approval. It is something to abstain from slander and censoriousness, and the hard luxury of injustice; something to be like that good man who passed everything which he had to say of others through the three sieves: Is it just? Is it necessary? Is it kind? But it is more to be like Christ, to be generous and cordial, to have “the glow of sympathy” with “the bloom of modesty,” not to be too vain to appreciate, not to be too envious to help and cheer.—Canon Farrar.