310. PLUCKED OUT (continued): Augustine’s reference to being plucked out mercifully (see note 309) comes from Psalm* 25:15:
“Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.”
But for a different kind of plucking, see Matthew* 5:29:
“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, the source for this merciless plucking, turns everything around. At Eliot’s own prompting, compare the ascetic representations (note 309) of Buddha’s Fire Sermon and St. Augustine’s Confessions with the “corresponding importance “ (note 308) of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, his most extensively preserved public speech delivered at the beginning of his ministry, not long after he had been tested in the wilderness. The Sermon includes many well known lessons, such as the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer and the salt and light metaphors; see Matthew* 5:13,14:
“Ye are the salt of the earth... Ye are the light of the world”
but also some harsh morality checks. Following the above eye plucking passage, which spoke the one whose eye wanders lustfully towards adultery, consider this extension to the “eye” passage on how to react to the evil of others, at Matthew* 5:38-39:
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
There is also a stern turn of both the eye and the light metaphors at Matthew* 6:22-23:
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Compare Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster (note 28):
“Preach to birds and beasts
What woman is, and help to save them from you;
How heaven is in your eyes, but in your hearts
More hell than hell has
...How all the good you have is but a shadow,
I' the morning with you, and at night behind you
Past and forgotten.”
This refers back to lines 27-29: “...Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.”
See also line 41: “looking into the heart of light, the silence.”
The Sermon on the Mount concludes at Matthew* 7: 26-27:
“And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.”
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* see note 0.1
