让我们继续来思考关于耶稣的登山宝训其中一段教导──八福。精神病专家费希尔博士认为，八福是精神和灵性健康最好的处方。在我们讨论这个话题的开始阶段，我想以八福的英文字，来说明一个重要的观念，八福的英文是“Beatitudes”，如把牠拆开成为“be-attitudes”，意思是一种「自我存在」的态度；所以八福是“be-attitudes”，而不是“do-attitudes”，即不是一种「行动」的态度，因为一个人的行动是从他的存在而来。有些牧者和解经家把八福的英文“Beatitudes”一字拆开，成为“the beauty attitudes”，即是「美丽的态度」，我觉得这个描述很有意思。

我们的态度对自我的每一部分都有很深远和重大的影响，无论是身体还是情绪。一位来自菲律宾的宣教士讲述在战争期间，他和太太怎样被日本人命令进入集中营，除了行李箱能够装的东西外，什么也不能带。他太太的体重只有一百磅多一点，并不强壮但是提着二百磅重的东西，大部分都是罐头食物，走了五英里的路程。他们两人到达后便再也提不起这个重量了！著名科学家曼海姆（Mannheim）说，我们平常只能用到身体潜力的八分之一，只有在运用正确的态度时，其余的潜力才能够发挥出来。

要是态度可以帮助我们发挥隐藏的体力，那么我们若采用主耶稣在登山宝训中所阐释的「美丽的态度」，我们可以有什么样的经验？我们可以将身体、精神和情绪的潜力都发挥得淋漓尽致，并且能够加倍的提高效率。很多医生和科学家都认为，对于个人的身心健康来说，最具影响力的不是我们的血管状况，而是我们的人生态度。

We continue considering on the fact that are the finest prescription for mental and spiritual health that has ever been given. It is helpful to keep in mind at this stage in our meditations that are be-attitudes, not do-attitudes; the doing comes out of the being. Some ministers and commentators refer to them as "the beautiful attitudes" - a description I find greatly appealing.

Our attitudes have a tremendous and powerful influence upon every part of our being - physical as well as emotional. A missionary from the Philippines tells how, during the war, he and his wife were ordered into prison camps by the Japanese, and were instructed that they could take with them all they could carry in their suitcases and no more. His wife, weighing just over 100 pounds, and not at all strong, carried a load of 200 pounds, mostly tinned food, a distance of five miles - a load neither of them could even lift after they arrived. Mannheim, a famous scientist, says that we normally use about one-eighth of our physical reserves, and that these reserves are only called upon when we employ the right attitudes.

If our attitudes can help tap hidden physical reserves, then think of what our experience can be if we adopt the "beautiful attitudes" which our Lord expounds for us in His Sermon on the Mount. We can maximise our potential and multiply our effectiveness, not only in the physical area of our being, but in our mental and emotional areas also. Many doctors and scientists agree that it is not our arteries but our attitudes which have the biggest say in our personal well- being.