ut." You remember
what the Pharisees said of Him once. They said: "This man receiveth
sinners." You know how they said it. They meant to say: "We did hope
that we should make something out of this new man, but we are quite
disappointed. He receives sinners."

And what did they mean? They meant what you have so often said: "You
can't touch pitch without being defiled." But this Man sat down with
the publican and He didn't take on any defilement from the publican.
On the other hand, He gave the publican His purity in the life of
Jesus Christ. Things worked the other way. He was the great negative
of God to the very law of evil that you have--evil contaminates good.
If you will put on a plate one apple that is getting bad among twelve
others that are pure, the bad one will influence the others. Christ
came to drive back every force of disease and every force of evil by
this strong purity of His own person, and He said: "I will go among
the bad and make them good." That is what He was doing the whole way
through. So His spirituality was not asceticism. And if you are going
to be so spiritual that you see no beauty in the flowers and hear no
music in the song of the birds; if the life which you pass into when
you consent to the crucifixion of self does not open to you the very
gates of God, and make the singing of the birds and the blossoming of
the flowers infinitely more beautiful, you have never seen Jesus yet.

What was His spirituality? The spirituality of Jesus Christ was a
concrete realization of a great truth which He laid down in His own
beatitudes. What was that? "Blest are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God." Now, the trouble is we have been lifting all the good
things of God and putting them in heaven. And I don't wonder that you
sing:

My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this,
And sit and sing itself away
To everlasting bliss.

No wonder you want to sing yourself away to everlasting bliss, because
everything that is worth having you have put up there. But Jesus said:
"Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." If you are pure
you will see Him everywhere--in the flower that blooms, in the march
of history, in the sorrows of men, above the darkness of the darkest
cloud; and you will know that God is in the field when He is most
invisible.

Second, subjection. The next note in the music of His life is His
absolute subjection to God. You can very often tell the great