The Mountain's Manifesto

Today at St Mary's Men's group we went through the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, the Christian's Manifesto as St Augustine put it, and the Jewel in the Crown of Holy Scripture as another had referred to it. I remember it as a boy just learning to read, pouring over the wonderful red letters (in the old Authorized Version marking the actual words of Jesus) where both sides of both columns of print were red and how such words enchanted my eyes, so much so that I've never gotten over that first love. The imagination is hardly able to conjure up how such words must have sounded, the terrible timber that proclaimed from the pulpit of that mountain.