The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life - A Practical Approach to Jesus's Teachings, Personal Transformation, and the Power of Positive Thinking in the Sermon on the Mount

by Emmet Fox

The orthodox churches have too often taught a crucified Christ finishing on the cross; but the Bible

gives us the Risen Christ Triumphant.

The great Law of the Universe, however, is just this—that what you think in your mind you will produce in your experience. As within, so without. You cannot think one thing and produce another. If you want to control your circumstances for harmony and happiness, you must first

control your thoughts for harmony and happiness, and then the outer things will follow. If you want health, you must first think health; and, remember, thinking health does not mean merely thinking a healthy body, important as that is, but it also includes thinking peace and contentment, and good-will to all, for, as we shall see later on in the Sermon, destructive emotion is one of the primary causes of disease. If you want

spiritual unfoldment and growth in the knowledge of God, you must think spiritual thoughts—God thoughts—and give your attention, which is your...

To pray scientifically is to keep affirming that God is helping him, that the temptation has no power against him, and constantly to claim that his own real nature is spiritual and perfect. This is

Antagonize any situation, and you give it power against yourself; offer mental nonresistance, and it crumbles away in

This instruction about turning the other cheek refers to the changing of one’s thought when faced by error, changing from the error to the Truth—and, as a rule, it acts like magic.

If, when someone is behaving badly, instead of thinking of the trouble, you

will immediately switch your attention off from the human to the Divine, and concentrate upon God, or upon the Real Spiritual Self of the person in question, you will find—if you really do this—that his conduct will immediately change. This is the secret of handling difficult people, and Jesus understood it thoroughly. If people are troublesome, you have only to change your thought about them, and then they will change too, because your own concept is what you see. This is the true revenge. It has bee...

to see it acting like ...

Again, the mere rehearsing in thought of any difficulty endows it with new life. Going over old grievances mentally; thinking how badly someone acted at some time, for instance, and recalling the details, has the effect of revivifying that which was quietly expiring of neglect.

With a new difficulty of any kind, it is the reception that you give it mentally, and the attitude that you adopt towards it in your own thought, that completely determine its effect upon you. That is what matters. What matters to you, truly, is not people or

things or conditions in themselves, but the thoughts and beliefs that you hold concerning them. It is not the conduct of others, but your own thoughts that make or mar you. You write your own history for tomorrow and for next year by the thoughts that you entertain today. You mold your own life destiny day by day, entirely by the manner...

of life, and Jesus compressed the secret of that art into a sentence when he...

“I said, ye are gods; and all of you sons of the Most High.”

This cuts out any possibility that the Deity could be the relentless and cruel tyrant that is often pictured by theology.

The underlying cause of all trouble is fear. If

If, when you are praying, you hold the thought that it is really God who is working through you, your prayers will gain immeasurably in efficiency. Say, “God is inspiring me.” If, when you have any ordinary thing to do, you hold the thought, “Divine Intelligence is working through me now, “you will

perform the most difficult tasks with

astonishing s...

The wondrous change that comes over us as we gradually realize what the Omnipresence of God really means, transfigures every phase of our lives, turning sorrow into joy, age into youth, and dullness into light and life. This is the glory—and the glory which comes to us is, of course, God’s too. And the bliss we ...