DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
The Reverend Frank R. Lxickey

THE SHORT COURSE SERIES

THE BEATITUDES

GENERAL PREFACE

The title of the present series is a sufficient
indication of its purpose. Few preachers,
or congregations, will face the long courses
of expository lectures which characterised
the preaching of the past, but there is a
growing conviction on the part of some
that an occasional short course, of six or
eight connected studies on one definite
theme, is a necessity of their mental and
ministerial life. It is at this point the pro
jected series would strike in. It would
suggest to those who are mapping out a
scheme of work for the future a variety of
subjects which might possibly be utilised in
this way.
The appeal, however, will not be restricted
to ministers or preachers. The various
volumes will meet the needs of laymen and
ii

General Preface
Sunday School teachers who are interested
in a scholarly but also practical exposition
of Bible history and doctrine. In the hands
of office-bearers and mission-workers the
" Short Course Series " may easily become
one of the most convenient and valuable
of Bible helps.
It need scarcely be added that while an
effort has been made to secure, as far as
possible, a general uniformity in the scope
and character of the series, the final re
sponsibility for the special interpretations
and opinions introduced into the separate
volumes, rests entirely with the individual
contributors. A detailed list of the authors and their
subjects will be found at the close of each
volume.

ui

TO
E. M. F.

TEbe Sbort Coarse Series
EDITED by
Rev. JOHN ADAMS, B.D.

THE BEATITUDES

BY THE
Rev. R. H. FISHER, D.D.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1912

FX31

CONTENTS

THE

POOR IN SPIRIT

•

FACE I

THE

MOURNERS .

17

THE

MEEK .

•

33
THOSE WHO HUNGER
AND 1
HIRST
AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS
49
THE
MERCIFUL .
67
THE
PURE IN HEART
83
THE
PEACEMAKERS
99
THE
PERSECUTED
117
APPENDIX .
137
INDEX
•
141
Vll
"Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with
its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained
thee ; thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee,
and even because it injures thee ; for this a Greater
than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest
thou that ' Worship of Sorrow ' ? The Temple thereof,
founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in
ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful
creatures : nevertheless venture forward ; in a low
crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest
the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially
burning." — Carlyle: Sartor Resarlus, Bk. ii.
chap. ix.

THE POOR IN SPIRIT.

THE FIRST BEATITUDE.
" Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven." — St. Matt. v. 3.
When St. Luke recorded the Beatitudes he
rendered this saying, " Blessed be ye poor "
— poor without qualification — " for yours is
the kingdom of God." The critics have
discussed which was the original form of the
Beatitude, most of them inclining to the
shorter and simpler form.
But is there, indeed, any reason why Jesus
should not have expressed the thought in
both ways ? If critics would only keep near
to the experience of life they would be saved
from many difficulties. Every preacher and
teacher is for ever repeating and reiterating
favourite thoughts, modifying them in ex
pression as occasion requires, believing that
such repetition is the only way to permanent
impression. At one time, and to a wider
3

The Beatitudes
audience than the disciples (as St. Luke
suggests), our Lord may have said,
"Blessed be ye poor" — poor in purse and
possession. And the multitude who heard —
remember that the great majority of man
kind are poor — would not misunderstand
His message. They would recognise the
universal note in it — its large democratic
reference. As a poor man spoke to poor
men, they would see that their lot was not
without its alleviations.
It was not the first time that a prophet of
Israel had given a warning against the risks
of riches — the danger of self-complacency
and arrogance and materialism, the danger of
supposing that because out of a superfluity
it is easy to do kind and good things, there
fore one is a kind and good man. Nor was
it the first time that a prophet of Israel had
declared that the grace of God, and all the
things which matter most for life, cannot be
bought for money, and are independent of
outward conditions. "The poor have the
gospel preached to them," was as much the
burden of Isaiah as of our Lord.
4

The Poor in Spirit
One need not doubt, therefore, that at some
time — or it may be often — Jesus spoke to
the masses of men and said, without any
qualification or more inward meaning,
"Blessed be ye poor."
Yet He gave to the disciples — He left for
us — a message far more profound than that.
Jesus would have been the last to limit
spiritual graces to any outward lot. All
beggars are not like Lazarus. A poor man
may be as grasping and avaricious and
material as any millionaire. Moreover, there
was in the history of His people the record
of men of wealth — men like Abraham and
Job, who were reverenced by their race as
men of God. In His own teaching our
Lord dwelt much on the right stewardship
of property ; and He offered the noblest
reward that service ever gained to the man
who had wisely turned his five talents into
ten. He, who knew human nature through
and through, understood well how a certain
measure of comfort saves from many of the
grosser temptations of life, and how wealth
increases the chances of usefulness which are
5

The Beatitudes
open to a generous and unselfish man.
Most of us can only follow one profession
— we are doctors, or lawyers, or teachers, or
so forth. But a rich man can follow many
professions. His money can endow research,
can found hospitals, can multiply libraries,
museums, galleries of art. Vicariously, by
his wealth, he can be the general benefactor
of mankind. It is obvious to any one who
knows the teaching of Christ that He recog
nised this, and would have been ill-content
had His blessing been withheld from the
philanthropist of the warm heart and liberal
hand. It is probable, therefore, that the Beatitude
as St. Matthew has recorded it — whether or
not it be the first form or the form most
commonly used — is the profoundest expres
sion of the mind of Christ. It alone is
wholly true to His method of inwardness ;
it alone makes plain that it is not a man's
possessions or his poverty that matters, it
is the man himself. " Blessed are the poor
in spirit " — whether they are poor in pocket
or not. 6

The Poor in Spirit
When we read the Beatitude in this form
we see within its folds two most characteristic
teachings of our Lord.
I. The first is the worth of mere man
hood and womanhood. Whether men and
women be rich or poor, high or low, learned
or ignorant, they yet are men and women :
and their wisdom is to reverence their nature
as a thing apart from all adventitious
considerations. If he learn this lesson
aright, the wealthiest man may be "poor
in spirit."
It is evident from this that the grace of
the Beatitude is as far remote as can be from
what is called " poor-spiritedness " — from the
frame of the mean and timid, or from defective
spirituality. Only a man accomplished in the
life of the soul is able to see himself apart
from his surroundings and to face the naked
reality of things. It was one of the great
charms of the Stoic temper — it was the Stoic's
contribution to the philosophy of life — that
an emperor like Marcus Aurelius and a slave
like Epictetus were alike able to see past the
accidents of life to the essential worth of the
7

The Beatitudes
human soul. What Jesus meant by being
"poor in spirit," was just this Stoic dis
cernment of the big and meaningful beside
those outward possessions which loom so
large in the eyes of many who have not
learned the proportion of things.
A great Christian divine, Jeremy Taylor,
set forth the same lesson when he wrote : " I
have fallen into the hands of thieves : what
then ? They have left me the sun and the
moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and
many friends to pity me, and some to relieve
me, and I can still discourse. And, unless
I list, they have not taken away my merry
countenance and my cheerful spirit and a
good conscience."
The patriarch Job, long before either the
Stoic or the Christian teacher, had spoken
the language of the poor in spirit in
words more memorable than any when he
said, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath
taken away : blessed be the name of the
Lord." It is impossible not to admire those who
can sit so lightly to outward conditions, and
8

The Poor in Spirit
who can be themselves alike in sunshine arid
in shower. Yet the question arises : Are we
to agree with those who maintain that such
an attitude is impossible for ourselves, and
the grace of the Beatitude is so unworldly
that it is for ever beyond our reach ?
Such " poverty of spirit " is not so un
common an accomplishment as such sceptics
would suppose. Every one remembers how
Dr. Johnson went to see the famous actor
David Garrick in his rooms, and as he
looked on Garrick's surroundings of luxury
and beauty and artistic value, he said, " Ah,
Davie, Davie, these are the things which
make death terrible." But though a casual
spectator of such an attractive environment
might without foolishness utter such a senti
ment, one wonders how far it entered at all
into the facts of the case, and whether a man
like Garrick was less able and willing to see
the naked truths of the world than if his
abode had been amid objects less congenial
to his artistic nature.
It is likely to be true that a man will learn
to be " poor in spirit " most readily just when
9

The Beatitudes
he is least occupied with external considera
tions ; and that is when his surroundings
jar the least upon his sensibilities. Here is
for ever the justification of fine art.
For the same reason one has little belief
in the crusade of those daring spirits who
advocate what they call the "simple life."
Grant all the elements of force in their plea,
there remains the insuperable objection that
their attitude is a pose, an affectation, an aping
of self-sacrifice. What they attain of outward
conformity to the simple life, they lose in
real simplicity of spirit. The inwardness of
the Beatitude is at enmity with every artificial
counterfeit. Yet in all classes of the community there
are multitudes who attain to its spirit —
multitudes who are not troubling much about
what they have or can gain, who are more
interested in the friendships and affections
with which they are surrounded, the books
they read, the causes in which they are
absorbed, their political party, their Church
— external things, no doubt, yet not incom
patible with " poverty of spirit," not leading
IO

The Poor in Spirit
to self-assertion or arrogance, not thought of
as personal possessions, but as the innocent
preoccupation of unworldly souls.
So far from the first Beatitude enshrining
an unattainable grace, the genuine humility
of it is the normal frame of mind, at least of
the majority of thinking men and women.
Most people know that they came naked
into this world, and are near an inevit
able hour when they will go naked out
of it.
II. It is when we turn to a second and
more religious meaning of the Beatitude
that one is less certain of its common attain
ment. Not only do the " poor in spirit "
know that the things which are seen and
temporal are the accidents and not the
essentials of life ; they know also that,
because they are poor, they need to depend
on God. To be humble and to feel one's
helplessness is one thing ; to look above for
help is another. The Stoic did not learn
that second lesson ; and in the presence of
proofs of our weakness in the universe more
appalling than any Stoic ever realised, there
ii

The Beatitudes
are thousands of our fellow-countrymen who
will not learn it.
"Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress ;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace."
That is the complete utterance of him who
is "poor in spirit." At the Holy Com
munion he says, "We are not worthy so
much as to gather the crumbs that fall from
Thy Table." His very attitude at prayer
asserts his dependence. When he offers
alms he says, with King David, " All things
come of Thee, and of thine own we give
Thee." When he goes forth to Christian
service he knows how true were the words
of His Master, "Without me ye can do
nothing." Truth, holiness, happiness — for
all he depends on Another. He is a litde
child in the great Father's house, and knows
that for the provision of body and mind and
spirit he looks to the Father's bounty.
That is a difficult grace to learn. But
until we have learned to be dependent on
12

The Poor in Spirit
God, as well as independent of the world,
we have not earned the whole blessing upon
the " poor in spirit."
III. A third reflection remains. It is that
here we have the best light on our Lord's
use of rewards and punishments. " Blessed
are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven."
There is no use in denying that many
moralists and religious thinkers have been
distressed by the fact that the New Testa
ment seems so full of the idea of gain. Do
this, and you will be amply paid for it. Deny
yourself that, and a rich compensation will
anon await you. The Evangelical preachers
of another day — not so far remote from ours
— were most forcible when they expounded
such a theme, and made heaven or hell the
alluring or deterrent incentives to conduct.
They were not without their appeal to the very
words of Jesus — to such blessings as those
of the first Beatitude, and to such promises
as were made to the Twelve Disciples, that
if they forsook houses and lands for Christ's
sake, manifold more of outward blessings
13

The Beatitudes
would be theirs even in this world, and an
eternal guerdon of glory would crown their
heads beyond.
The modern mind has turned from such
an estimate of virtue as conduct calculated
by consequence, and sees the only worth of
virtue in its being sought for itself alone.
A writer like the late Sir John Seeley made
out that the disciples of our Lord, if they
believed His promises, were really making
an astute bargain for themselves, and the
veneration which the Church has paid them
would on such a basis be little enough
deserved. But surely in these very Beatitudes is the
key to all our Saviour's use of rewards and
punishments. At times our Lord spoke of
material things. In a world of imagery He
had to speak in images. The streets of gold
and the many mansions of the Father's house
seemed a wonderful reward to a poor man
with his one-roomed house. Yet all the
time Christ's mind was dominated with
other and spiritual things, and every symbol
must be read in the light of the Sermon on

The Poor in Spirit
the Mount, with its promises for the spirit
alone. Applause, indeed, is the due of virtue ;
reward is its proper flower and crown.
" Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven." But the only"
reward worth thinking of is the joy of going
on. Even now the " poor in spirit " enter
the atmosphere of the eternal, and some
breath of their immortal destiny fans their
brow. They know even now that they are
not mocked ; that their aspirations are not
in vain ; that they are not seeking an illusion
which will vanish as one has seen the
mirage of the desert vanish as experience
brought a nearer view. Theirs is, and
because it is, will be the Kingdom of Heaven^
Fancy telling a scientific man that his reward
will be some money, some title, some
popularity. The reward he seeks is to learn
more of nature, to seek more firmly the con
trol of her agencies, to wrest something more
of her secret out of the dark. Fancy telling
a good man that his reward will be to sit on
a gold throne, and to play a harp for all
eternity. The reward he seeks is to know
15

The Beatitudes
himself better — to see faculties he has hardly
as yet realised develop and gain co-ordina
tion and elasticity and power ; it is to see a
usefulness which he had dreamed of, but
which narrow limits of opportunity had re
stricted, become great and beneficent on an
ampler field in a serener air ; it is to find a
fellowship open and generous, and ever
widening and deepening with the holy, wise,
and good, who are the true congeners of his
soul. Such a reward — not selfish or sordid
or unworthy of the loftiest of our race — Jesus
has promised to His people. " Blessed are
the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven."

16

THE MOURNERS.

17

THE SECOND BEATITUDE.
" Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall be
comforted." — St. Matt. v. 4.
An eminent teacher has said : " It will ever be
a question whether men abuse more their
sorrows or their joys ; but no earnest soul
can doubt which of these abuses is the more
fatal. To sin in the one case is to yield to a
temptation : to sin in the other is to resist a
divine grace. Sorrow is God's last message
to man. It is God speaking in emphasis.
He who abuses it shows that he can shut
his ears when God speaks loudest." There
are few people who can read such words
without some measure of self-reproach. A
man who has gone through great trouble
said to the present writer that "he knew
that he was a better man before it. It had
done him no good." If we are entirely
honest with ourselves we shall probably all
19

The Beatitudes
admit that we have lost much through pur
sorrows — lost a certain buoyancy and elas
ticity of life which will not come back
again, and an interest in the world and in
our kind which was one of our happiest
possessions. If indeed our sorrow has been that which
St. Paul described as the "sorrow of the
world," it has injured us still more deeply.
If we have met it heartlessly, trying only to
divert our minds from it by amusement or
self-indulgence or the quips of a cynical
humour, then it has only hardened and
soured our nature. That sorrow of the
world worketh death.
But even at the best, even when it was
godly sorrow, many will admit that it has
chilled them. So far from the conventional
phrases about " refiner's fire " being com
pletely true, the furnace of affliction has not
left our nature pure gold. If some dross
has gone, some cinders and some smoke of
the fire are clinging to us.
There is no matter in which absolute truth
fulness, both with ourselves and towards
20

The Mourners
those whom we would fain help in their
time of trouble, is more necessary than in
the matter of consolation, and especially in
the use of the comforts of religion. A false
note jars and hurts like a blow. Therefore,
even when we hear our Lord say, "Blessed
are they that mourn : for they shall be com
forted," we remember that He did not say
that such comfort makes up for everything,
and that there is no blessing also for the
unharassed life. Blessed are they who know
the joy of the Lord.
This needs to be said by way of caution.
Every one cannot reflect on a past sorrow
as Cardinal Newman did —
" I would not miss one sigh or tear,
Heart-pang or throbbing brow ;
Sweet was the agony severe,
And sweet its memory now."
Yet that would be a strange soul who
could not understand the Lord's Beatitude
on mourning, and who met it with no
acquiescence and belief. However little
satisfied we are with the gait in which we
21

The Beatitudes
passed through the Dark Valley, at least we
have brought three things out of it.
I. The first is a kindlier view of our
fellows. One uses homely words, and says,
' I never knew people were so good before.'
That is about comparative strangers. Then
there were the hearts nearer our own, about
whom we felt that they were really suffering
with us in our trouble, giving virtue out of
themselves that somehow they might relieve
and strengthen us. Thus even in our bitterest
hours we felt that the cords of love were
being more tighdy drawn.
" Mortal, if thou art beloved,
Life's offences are removed.
All the fateful things that checked thee,
Hearten, hallow, and protect thee.
What is sorrow ? Comfort's prime ; ¦
Love's choice Indian Summer time.
Sickness ! thou wilt pray it worse,
For so blessed kindly nurse.
And for Death ! when thou art dying,
'Twill be Love beside thee lying."
There can be no doubt at all that it is in
the Dark Valley of mourning, and not on
22

The Mourners
the happy plains of life, that the best sides
of human nature are revealed, and we learn
also to believe in that Divine Love which
came to its climax of tenderness on a Cross.
Therefore, "Blessed are they that mourn."
II. A second gain that comes from sorrow
is an added sense of the seriousness of life.
We may not think ourselves better men or
women after it, but certainly we are more
thoughtful. Sorrow may not do everything ;
but it sobers the judgment, and makes us
see ourselves and the world with clearer
eyes. These were true words which George
Eliot wrote of one of her characters : " Adam
Bede had not outlived his sorrow — had not
felt it slip from him as a temporary burden,
and leave him the same man again. Do any
of us ? God forbid. It would be a poor
result of all our anguish and our wresding
if we won nothing but our old selves at the
end of it, if we could return to the same
blind loves, the same self-confident blame,
the same light thoughts of human suffering,
the same frivolous gossip over blighted
human lives, the same feeble sense of the
23

The Beatitudes
unknown towards which we have sent forth
irrepressible cries in our loneliness." Some
such blessing of seriousness must ever be
brought by mourning. A common word
we use has a wonderful suggestion of this
in it. We talk of a " heavy sorrow " — never
of a heavy joy. Joy is light and bubbles
up. But sorrow sounds the deeps. It takes
a man to the bed - rock of experience.
Because it is always good to be in contact
with reality, there is a blessedness in mourn
ing which hardly comes in happier days.
Think, for example, how it makes a man
know the worth of his religion — sometimes
with appalling distress when he discovers
that familiar and accepted phrases have no
potency to cheer ; and sometimes with a
sweet wonder that he had never understood
before the graciousness of the promises of
God. If, while the sun shone, the profoundest
things of life had thus been unseen and
unrealised, like the stars at noonday, was it
not a blessing when, with the thick darkness,
"Hesperus and the host of heaven came,
and lo, creation widened to our view " ?
24

The Mourners
III. Those who search their own experi
ence for the meaning of sorrow will not
deny a third blessing which it brings. It
gives a chance of making something great
of life. Most people, with moderate abilities
and a restricted career, go through the world
with few impulses to spiritual development.
Their life is dull, not because it is empty,
but because the incidents which people it
are so little varied from each other. Few
occasions call for the self-denials and heroisms
which give their colour to character and fix
the levels on which life is to be led. A
great sorrow is such an occasion — perhaps
the most stimulating which men and women
know. Every latent resource is summoned
to effectiveness, and commonplace people
discover that the inspiration which makes
shipwreck or war or pestilence call out the
noblest that is in humanity is bearing its
romance even to them.
If we could always live at the levels which we
gain at such hours of grief, how much larger
would be our minds, how much more gener
ous our hopes and aims ! A husband and
25

The Beatitudes
father said beside the dead body of his child,
" We must try to have a more religious home
after this." One realised that sorrow was
, awaking in the man aspirations and affinities
which might — if the glory did not fade — make
him enter upon fields of spiritual experience
hitherto untravelled, and embrace for his
own a life of piety and benevolence which
would be the manifest confirmation of the
Beatitude, " Blessed are they that mourn."
Thus in the revelation which our trouble
makes of human brotherliness, in the deep
ened gravity of thought which it induces, and
in its summons to heroism and godliness, the
compensations of sorrow may be found, and
mourning may truly be called blessed.
But surely the very fact that consolation
is promised, and the mourners pronounced
blessed because they shall be comforted, is in
itself a proof that mourning is not the
normal nor the highest condition of the soul.
Even now, in this world of pain, surcease
of sorrow is promised to all those who love
the Lord. "Come unto Me all ye that
labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
26

The Mourners
you rest." "My peace I give unto you."
"Enter ye into the joy of your Lord."
And, in the world to come, it is the promise
of the Blessed Home that there " God shall
wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor
crying, neither shall there be any more pain ;
for the former things have passed away."
In presence of such invitations and
promises — in the light of our knowledge of
human character — it is necessary to attempt
some reconciliation of the blessing upon the
mourners with the description of the highest
and the lasting life as a life of joy. Such a re
conciliation is found in the career of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Bishop Gore has finely said :
"The character which we find described in
the Beatitudes is beyond all question nothing
else than our Lord's own character put into
words. ... It is a description set side by
side with an example." Now, our Lord is
called the " Man of Sorrows," and we know
how truly the world's sorrow broke His
heart. Yet He was also a man of joy. The
complete fulfilm.nt of duty brought Him
27

The Beatitudes
delight, the peace of domestic affection
charmed Him : He found amid the hills and
by the sea " the joy of elevated thoughts."
Which tide, the man of sorrows, or the man
of joy, bears the truest revelation of His
nature ? Are not both tides in themselves
inadequate to represent a complete ideal ?
And is not the full truth about Him this —
that He knew well that
" Not enjoyment and not sorrow
Is our destined end and way."
As a man upon a journey, He smiled gladly
when the sun shone ; and He strode on
unmurmuringly when the rain fell : but He
was not out to enjoy the weather ; He was
on an errand ; and whatever were the condi
tions He met, He was master of Himself
and of them — not "the man of Pleasure,"
not " the man of Pain " : but " the man of
Power." Such a detachment is the secret of a final
victory, both over sorrow and over happiness,
and of the Beatitude both upon the mourners
and upon those who rejoice. Tolstoi has
28 "

The Mourners
put it well : " A man who lives a Christian
life does not ascribe any great meaning to
his joys, but looks on them as accidental
phenomena which meet him in the path of
life. And he does not look upon his
sufferings as something that ought not to
be. He looks on them as indispensable
phenomena of life, like friction at work."
If that be true — and the final pattern of
human character be neither crowned with
flowers nor draped in black, but a large
humane spirit which finds itself at home in
every vicissitude — like a good ship making
her way homeward-bound through all seas —
we need not linger exclusively and over
much on the Beatitude upon the mourners,
as if they alone were blessed. Our wisdom
is to extract the lesson from every event and
see the Providence of all the discipline of
our lives. Though a man should study at
a university many years and gain many and
high degrees, he would not have found a
fuller philosophy of life than that which St.
Paul had discovered for himself while he tried
to follow his Master : " I have learned, in
29

The Beatitudes
whatsoever state I am, therewith to be
content. I know both how to be abased
and I know how to abound. Everywhere
and in all things I am instructed both to be
full and to be hungry, both to abound and
to suffer need. I can do all things through
Christ which strengtheneth me." That is
indeed the true wisdom of a full-orbed life.
All else is one-sided.
Once when the celebrated French preacher
Massillon was preaching before Louis xiv.
he addressed the King directly, as was the
unseemly custom of the time, and said,
" If the world addressed your majesty from
this place, the world would not say, ' Blessed
are they that mourn,' but blessed is the prince
who has never fought but to conquer, who
has filled the universe with his name, who
through the whole course of a long and
flourishing reign enjoys in splendour all that
men admire — extent of conquest, the esteem
of enemies, the love of his people, the
wisdom of his laws. But, sire, the language
of the Gospel is not the language of the
world." Yet if the world had been speaking
30

The Mourners
the truth and not gross flattery in such an
address, the world would have been nearer
than the preacher to the large sane wisdom
of St. Paul and of his Lord, who saw the
experiences of life in their due place, in their
right proportion, and could find a wholesome
happiness in the hour of triumph as well as
in the hour of defeat. There is no depreca
tion of the blessedness of fine achievement
in the assurance that failure also, righdy
encountered, will yield its blessedness ;
"Blessed are they that mourn, for they
shall be comforted."

3«

THE MEEK.

33

THE THIRD BEATITUDE.
"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the
earth." — St. Matt. v. 5.
No virtue is more easily counterfeited than
meekness. But most assuredly the blessing
which belongs to the real virtue is not
promised to the counterfeit.
I. Men may be meek for gain. A prudent
regard for self-interest will check the ex
pression of their own opinion and repress the
outburst of their temper. And they will be
meek because they must. It would not pay
a shopman, harassed as he often is by un
reasonable customers, to betray his annoyance
or his amusement. So must a subordinate
often accept without a murmur the petty
irritation of his superior, finding relief for his
feelings, perhaps, in passing on the unpleasant
ness to some one who in turn is subordinate
to him. People have often to learn the truth
35

The Beatitudes
of that saying of Queen Elizabeth to one
of her courtiers who had been goaded into
an ill-tempered retort. "Ah, Sir Philip,"
" anger often makes men witty ; but it
always keeps them poor." The meekness of
manner which is trained by such self-interest
is a poor enough imitation of the Christian
grace which our Master declared to be
blessed. II. But it is better than another counterfeit
which passes for meekness — the placidity of
temper whose mother is disdain. There are
some composed, unruffled natures whose only
motive for self-restraint is that they do not
think it worth while to show any feeling. A
genuine contempt for the judgment of their
neighbours is the secret of their calm. This
looks like meekness : but it is a devilish
pride. It may be boldly said, that it is a
mark of a good man that one can make him
angry. He is caring so much about things,
and minding so much about his fellow-
creatures, that he is easily stirred to in
dignation. So far from that being a fault, it
is the sign of an ingenuous and wholesome
3°

The Meek
nature. It is infinitely more respectful to a
man that his acquaintance should be angry
with him than that he should fancy him
beneath even that tribute of his attention.
A meekness whose source is in disdain can
bring no blessing with it.
III. Nor is a third kind of meekness of
moral worth — that which is a mere dulness
and torpidness of good nature — the fat
serenity of a sluggish soul. There is no
great merit in commanding one's temper if
one have no temper to command.
Such counterfeits of the grace of meekness,
ingenious and sustained though they be, will
not for long deceive the observant. They
have none of the impressiveness and charm
of the virtue which Jesus blessed. Perhaps
there is no quality of character more charming
and more impressive.
The Prophet Isaiah reached a high level of
inspiration when he described the Servant of
the Lord in terms of this grace of meekness.
" Behold My Servant, whom I uphold ; Mine
elect, in whom My soul delighteth : I have
put My Spirit upon Him ; He shall bring forth
37

The Beatitudes
judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry,
nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard
in the street. A bruised reed shall He not
break, and the smoking flax shall He not
quench : He shall bring forth judgment unto
truth." It is no wonder that the instinct of
Christendom has seen that description ful
filled in " Gentle Jesus, meek and mild " —
in the forbearing Lord " who when He was
reviled, reviled not again ; when He suffered,
He threatened not." Just by such meekness
Jesus has won the heart of the world.
There had been another in the history of
Israel before Him who was known for his
meekness also — Moses, the man of God.
Take the Old Testament, and ask whose
figure is the most dominant and majestic in
it. The answer will be — It was the man of
whom it is recorded that he was "meek
above all the men which were upon the face
of the earth." Like the greater Prophet,
who was to come after him, Moses com
mands admiration because he was not ag
gressive and self-assertive, and (as we say
in modern adjectives, unpleasant but often
3«

The Meek
appropriate) he was not "pushing" and
"loud" and "self-advertising." He also
" did not strive nor cry, nor let his voice be
heard in the street." The meekness of the
man was his charm.
Take such a test for the people we know:*
Think of those who are always, as they
say, "standing up for their rights" and
refusing, as they express it, to be "put
upon " — the people who are always looking
out for slights and " determined to stand no
nonsense " from any one — there is hardly a
poorer spectacle in the world ; and they are
nearly always unsuccessful, losing the respect
which they are so aggressively eager to gain.
Contrast them with the meek whom we know
— the gentlefolk at heart, whatever their birth
may have been — who are not worrying about
their dignity, and are too modest about their
own powers to think that they have a claim
to much distinction — the people who do not
even like to speak too loudly in any company
because it draws attention to themselves, and
who would hate to obtrude themselves or
make a show — the gentle, sensitive, shrinking
39

The Beatitudes
souls, refined in thought and manner and
speech, in whose very presence all violence
is abashed and all self-seeking looks mean.
Can we make such a contrast without under
standing to the full what our Lord meant by
the Beatitude, " Blessed are the meek " ?
At our time when loudness and aggressive
ness often seem the synonym of " modern-
ness," and when indeed the nervous strain
at which people live makes self-command
more difficult and impatience a commoner
fault than it used to be, it is good to hear
and to give heed to that blessing upon the
meek. All that is best in us leaps up to
recognise its truth.
The reward which is promised in the
Beatitude presents at first sight a greater
difficulty : " Blessed are the meek ; for
they shall inherit the earth." Had it
been heaven that was promised to the
meek — that gracious world where the un
selfish and holy have their home — then
indeed the offer would seem assured of fulfil
ment. But it seems, at first, a paradox that
the meek should find the rewards of earth.
40

The Meek
Such, however, was the promise of the
Master, renewing an old declaration of the
37 th Psalm which it is impossible to sub
limate into any merely spiritual recompense.
And is it, as a matter of fact, away from
experience that in the long run, even in this
world, it is not the " pushers " and the noisy
who succeed ? Violence has its day, but it
is not always a long day; In those conversa
tions in which Napoleon is recorded to have
taken part during his banishment, there is
one often-quoted saying of his : " Alexander
and Caesar and I founded great empires :
but the empires perished because they were
founded on force. Jesus Christ alone
founded an empire upon love, and to this
day thousands will die for Him." Whether
Napoleon used those words or not, the
sentiment in them is true. Examples of its
truth are written large on the history of
mankind. Think, for example, of South
Africa. The story of our relations with that
land is not on the whole a creditable story.
But there are aspects of it on which one can
reflect with pride. Contrast, let us say,
4i

The Beatitudes
Cecil Rhodes with David Livingstone — the
one a type of aggressive and self-confident
vigour, the other an unwearied and unselfish
worker for knowledge and freedom, and for
Jesus Christ. When all for which the Rand
millionaires stood has perished, and is
remembered only as an ugly blot on the fair
name of England, Livingstone's services to
mankind will be a cherished and inalienable
possession of our history. The meek will
have inherited the earth.
The promise is not always fulfilled at once :
it is an heir and not a possessor who is
spoken of: an assured kingdom in the
future, though it may be after many days.
Yet the experience of men has been that the
quiet and the thoughtful and the dutiful, in
time came to their own.
Moreover, the real inheritance of the earth
is very different from what hard men, in
their eager ambition, suppose it to be. The
conquerors can get the outside trappings of
earthly possession ; but what do they really
gain even of the world they seek ? While
they are absorbed in their battles and their
42

The Meek
law-making, the homes and the hearts of the
people are utterly outside their power. In a
sermon to children, the late Dean Stanley of
Westminster told of a grave-stone in the
Abbey on which is written only these words :
"Jane Lister, dear child, died October 7,
1688." Just at that date the public mind in
England was filled with the rumour of
revolution and of the coming of William and
Mary to the English throne : but there in
London, at the heart of the kingdom, two
parents were thinking only of the blank in
their home and the sorrow in their souls.
In the last resort it is always so ; kings
and parliaments and rulers hardly touch at all
the deepest elements of the life of the people.
A man may seem to have inherited the earth
when he has gained nothing more than some
new anxieties and burdens to fill his days
with pain.
" Dost thou wish to possess the earth ? "
asked St. Augustine once : " Beware, lest the
earth possess thee." But the meek enter
into a fuller inheritance of the earth, even
the treasures of its honour and its love.
43

The Beatitudes
If a meek man, therefore, be ineffectual,
it is not on account of his meekness, but on
account of his weakness. A man like the
patriarch Isaac, for example, lost much by
undue concession in his old age : but he had
made mark enough at his time by wise con
ciliation, and had setded terms of friendship
and peace with his neighbours which no mere
aggressiveness would have secured. For the
Church of Christ, and for every Christian
man and woman, it is a useful teaching yet,
that the way to influence, permanent because
worthy, is through the same channel of quiet
persuasion and humble merit and the steady
insistence of love.
They are advising other methods for the
Church. Nothing pleases some of her critics
in the unostentatious and old-fashioned ways.
They will have advertisement and noise, and
the methods of the theatre or the political
platform. Such methods seem to succeed
for a litde, and crowds follow each new
charlatan. But the demand for novelty
and excitement exhausts itself, and heresy of
doctrine or scandal of morals is the end of
44

The Meek
each new vagary of those who "lift up
their voice in the street." The quiet, self-
restrained ways of the Church are best.
They are the most likely to secure a lasting
success. Big things do not need to be
shouted about. Life and death and destiny
are persistent themes ; and people feel that
they approach them best, quiedy, solemnly,
without newspaper controversy and platform
declamation. Therefore the future is with
the Catholic Church — not, of course, only
the Roman Catholic Church, but the Church
of history and tradition — which seeks out the
old ways and walks therein. "The meek
shall inherit the earth."
As a new type of character is being
evolved in an age of competition and ad
vertisement, it is worth while remembering
also that the promise to the meek is not
revoked in the twentieth century. David
Hume once said : " Nothing carries a man
through the world like a true, genuine,
natural impudence " ; and sometimes one is
tempted to believe that Hume was right. In
business and the professions and public life,
45

The Beatitudes
there are successful men who seem to have no
other qualification than that which is collo
quially called "push." But is there more
than a superficial truth in such a reflection ?
Whatever apparent success is found by such
men, must it not be qualified and rendered
nugatory to them by their association with
the cultivated, the powerful in intelligence,
and the refined in nature ? Does it not
become apparent to them (for they are not
lacking in ability) that, after a litde, they will
be forgotten, and be as if they had never
been, while ideals foreign to them are stamp
ing their mark on society, and principles they
could not grasp are changing the face of the
world ? What sort of an inheritance of the
earth is that which must be loathed even
while it is possessed, and is seen (if those
men have eyes at all) to be but the possession
of a day ?
On the other hand, the meek — the holy
and humble men of heart — find themselves
at one with the eternal things, and in the
fellowship of the saints, and in the brother
hood of Christ, and though they are not
46

The Meek
thinking of reward nor seeking it, for them
the reward is sure — because natural, in
evitable — the future must be with them,
for they only are allied with the things
that last.

47

THOSE WHO HUNGER AND THIRST
AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS.

d 49

THE FOURTH BEATITUDE.
"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness : for they shall be filled." — St. Matt. v. 6.
A remarkable hymn, which once attained
a great popularity, has in it the lines —
" Doing is a deadly thing,
Doing ends in death."
That hymn is suggestive of the famous
comment of a Scotsman upon the Sermon
on the Mount, that he did not think highly
of the Sermon on the Mount ; " there was
too much morality in it."
A singular illustration of the same frame of
mind was seen some years ago, when an
edition of the New Testament Scriptures
was published which was known as the
Marked 3ijw Testament. One or more red
lines were drawn under every text which the
5i

The Beatitudes
editors thought of special importance. No
mark at all appeared under the Beatitudes.
So far has one phase of Christian opinion
passed from the characteristic teaching of
Jesus Himself ; so sadly has it lost His
most characteristic note.
Contrast those rhymes about "deadly
doing " with the words of our Master.
" 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." No condemnation of
"deadly doing," is there. Indeed, it is im
possible to go, with a mind unprejudiced
and cleared from the accretions of a later
theology, to the actual teaching of Jesus
Himself without feeling that a passionate
love of righteousness is through it. Morality,
in its widest sense, is the very air it breathes.
The Hebrew conscience has been called the
" keenest religious instrument of the ancient
world." A famous writer found in the word
" righteousness " a summary of the whole
Old Testament message. Jesus came not to
. destroy, but to fulfil that message. The very
52

Seekers after Righteousness
heart of His teaching is in the saying or
St. John : " He that doeth not righteousness
is not of God."
When, therefore, we hear Him offer a
blessing upon those who " hunger and thirst
after righteousness," we may be certain that
there is no suggestion in His words of the
doctrine called "imputed righteousness," or
of any such doctrine which has come in after
years to be prominent in Christian teaching.
The Beatitude is a plain unequivocal blessing
upon those who do well — who try to live
cleanly and be just to God and man.
There is, however, a note of passion in
the words which removes them from the
sphere of what in Scodand used to be called
the "cold moralities." "Hunger" and
" thirst " are primitive, fundamental appetites
which every one understands. But middle-
class people hardly understand them in their
intensity of meaning. The men with the
famished eyes who look in through the
windows of bakers' shops and gloat greedily
upon a plenty which they cannot share — they
know the meaning of " hunger " and " thirst "
53

The Beatitudes
as ordinary people hardly guess it. There is
some suggestion of their eager desire in the
" hunger and thirst after righteousness " over
which the Beatitude is uttered.
A modern writer on religious subjects
put this well when he said that " no love is
pure which is not passionate, no virtue is safe
which is not enthusiastic." It is such a love,
such a virtue, which Jesus inculcates upon
men. Think of righteousness as He defines it,
as He exemplified it on earth, as He per
sonifies it still, and everywhere it has the
power deeply to stir the heart. He defines
Righteousness as an enthusiastic love of God
and man — to love God with all our being,
and our neighbour as ourselves. He ex
emplified righteousness in His own life as
(i) a keen sympathy with the poor and
sorrowful ; (2) an antipathy just as keen to
all Pharisaic superiority and unreality ; (3) a
lowly estimate of one's own need of honour
and pleasure ; and (4) a heroic devotion to duty
beyond even what is normally expected of a
man, so that an answer can be given to the
54

Seekers after Righteousness
question, What do ye more ? But stirring as
it is to the imagination to recall the figure of
the righteous Lord and His consecrated life
on earth, we have an inspiration that is loftier
still in the contemplation of righteousness
for ever personified in Him. As Dean
Church finely said : " The Gospel calls us
to the study of a living person and the
following of a living mind." When, there
fore, we hear the blessing upon those who
" hunger and thirst after righteousness," it is
no slavish adherence to the letter of a law,
no cold morality which is enjoined. It is a
burning attachment to the Fairest and the
Holiest — a reverent remembrance of His
beautiful life on earth, and an adoring worship
of Him now glorified and crowned.
If any one ask why should we desire such
a Righteousness, we do not argue over the
matter. It is as natural that we should seek
Christ as it is for " hunger " and " thirst "
to desire to be satisfied, as natural as it is for
the mind to think and the heart to feel. That
is the charm of this Beatitude, and indeed of
all of the Beatitudes, that they do not require
55

The Beatitudes
to be argued for and defended. Once they
were spoken, they became the indisputable
and inalienable possession of the race.
Three aspects of the Beatitude, however,
remain which demand some fuller treat
ment. I. First there is our Lord's teaching re
garding the hopefulness of the human
struggle. " Blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness : for they shall
be filled." It has been the despair of the best
men that their progress in the moral life has
seemed so slow, and the goal so inaccessible.
"Thy righteousness," said the Psalmist, "is
like the great mountains." It is serene and
most beautiful ; but it is far away. It
discourages and appals as much as it
fascinates. Many have thought of Jesus so
— disconcerted and abashed in His presence
rather than allured to follow in His steps.
The ideal will always have in it some such
aspect of awe. But it is the teaching of
Jesus that every one who really wishes to be
good will be good ; those who seek the
supreme righteousness and whose souls are
56

Seekers after Righteousness
athirst for God, will be satisfied with the
object of their desire.
It is the law of this world that environ
ment answers to need. The eye seeks
light and finds it ; the body seeks food
and finds it ; so will the hungry soul be
satisfied. Here once more we have the experience of
multitudes to say Amen to the teaching of
our Master. It may be that there never
were so many people at any time as there are
at our time who have found the supreme
satisfaction of the soul just through this
avenue of the appetite for Righteousness.
Our Lord said that His spirit would convict
men "of sin and righteousness and judg
ment." At other periods of the world's
history, the sense of sin and, it may be, the
fear of judgment, have brought men to them
selves and to Christ. Through these gate
ways they have reached the Highest. But
the sense of sin is less acute at our age, and
certainly the fear of judgment is a less
formative emotion ; fewer people find the
conviction of their personal sinfulness or the
57

The Beatitudes
dread of eternal suffering to be a road to the
Saviour's heart. But there never was so
humane a spirit in any community. There
never was a greater longing for the abolition
of old tyrannies and the establishment of
justice between man and man. Never did
the general heart respond more readily to
the claim of unselfish and generous ideals.
Never in all the ages were more men led to
the Lord Jesus, just because they were con
victed of "Righteousness," and saw in Him
the realisation of every dream of justice and
compassion which they had cherished. Be
cause they " hunger and thirst after righteous
ness," they are " filled with all the fulness of
God." IL The second aspect of the Beatitude
which demands our notice is its recognition
of the place of aspiration in character. The
road to character is generally described as
through act and custom and habit. But
there is more in life than act and custom and
habit. There are efforts, deep desires, and
high ambitions, aspirations, impulses, Teach
ings forth of the nature which have never
58

Seekers after Righteousness
perhaps crystallised into acts, but which are
most meaningful in the making of a man. It
is after all a " hunger " and " thirst " which
are blessed, and not an attainment, an achieve
ment, a possession. If a true judgment on
human life is to be passed, it must be by
one who knows not only what we have done,
but what we have honesdy tried to do.
There is many a glorious failure which has
left a more permanent mark for good upon
the soul than a hundred easily won successes.
So the brightest charm of this Beatitude is
not its promise of the perfect attainment of
Heaven, where they serve in righteousness
without a flaw, but its blessing upon the
toilsome way along which, with many a
stumbling step, we press forward towards
the goal.
" Not on the. vulgar mass
Called 'work,' must sentence pass.
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a
trice :
59

The Beatitudes
" But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his 'work,' yet swelled the
man's amount :
" Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped ;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher
shaped."
" The great thing in this life is not having,
but wanting : turning from all earthly havings
to thirst for the unattained. Life's possibilities
lie infinitely beyond life's realisations. Having
is a limited thing which in possessing we
transcend. A deep, persuasive sense of lack
touches the infinite ; every true thirst of
the being resolving itself into a thirst for
God." Blessed are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness.
III. But perhaps our third reflection is of
60

Seekers after Righteousness
most practical value. How is such a hunger
and thirst after righteousness to be stimulated?
How in the multitude of desires, rational and
irrational, by which the will is swayed, are
those better impulses to be cultivated and
given sway ? We desire much, fiercely and
persistendy. Base appetites usurp large rooms
of the heart. Ambitions for honour with
out desert, and reward without the duty that
has earned it, and popularity without the ser
vice to our brethren which is its one worthy
excuse — such desires move resdessly through
our minds. How shall we learn to hunger
more for righteousness than for ought else ?
There is a sermon on this theme by a divine
eminent in his day, Dr Leckie of Ibrox ; and
he had no better suggestion to offer than that
we should read much of good biography.
" Lives of great men " are indeed good read
ing — far better than fiction, just because they
have that singular charm of the authentic
about which Carlyle used to speak so much,
and which most of us have ourselves experi
enced. A good biography of a really good
man must stir a generous admiration, must
6 1

The Beatitudes
excite at least some desire to emulate the
hero's virtue and services. Therefore there
is no better reading for the young, whose
minds are formed so much by examples, and
who assimilate a precept for life so much
more easily and permanently when it is
presented in concrete form. There is no
need to detract from Dr. Leckie's praise of
a good biography as a stimulus to the hunger
for righteousness. No one could read of
Wilberforce, or Shaftesbury, or Livingstone
without being, at least for the time, on a
loftier plane of being.
But the shallower thought of his sermon
may be set beside a strangely impressive dis
course by one of the great preachers of the
world. Horace Bushnell has a sermon which
bears the tide, " Christ regenerates even the
desires." He dealt with the incident when
the Sons of Zebedee came to Jesus and asked
Him to give them whatever they wished.
Bushnell showed the folly of their random re
quest and the strange psychological problems
which open before the mind which would
seriously consider the worth of human desires.
62

Seekers after Righteousness
And then he proceeded to show how James and
John, the inconsiderate and reckless, were yet
so moved in after days by their fellowship
with Christ, that even their desires were
transfigured and regenerated. The whole
secret of the government of the nature is
disclosed by one of them — St. John — when
he says : " Whatsoever we ask we receive of
Him, because we keep His commandments,
and do those things which are pleasing in His
sight." " He was in God's order, and now all
his desires went to their mark."
The habit of prayer, the new love of the
Lord which so adjusts the nature that all the
gusty inclinations of the soul are laid at rest ;
above all, the companionship with Christ
which moulds our minds to His and makes
us insensibly take His type — these methods,
and the discipline of Providence, are the ways
in which the desires, which are at the back of
consciousness and outside the reasoned
government of the will, can be conformed to
the highest, and men may learn to " hunger
and thirst after righteousness."
But of them all there is none so effectual
€>3

The Beatitudes
as the love of Christ, which thinks of Him as
the friend and companion of the soul, and
desires to be with Him as an exile pines for
home. There is a letter by David Gray, the
Scottish poet, which is among the saddest
things in literature. Gray was a lad of
promise and of a fine nature. He yearned
for a life of letters, and nothing would serve
him but to leave his home near Glasgow and
adventure upon the great world of London,
there to make his fame. He fell into a con
sumption : he was poor and dying ; and this
is what he wrote to his parents : —
"Torquay, Jan. 6, 1861.
"Dear Parents, — I am coming home —
homesick. I cannot stay from home any
longer. What's the good of me being so
far from home and sick and ill ? O God,
I wish I were home, never to leave it more.
Tell everybody that I am coming back — no
better, worse, worse. What's about climate,
about frost or snow or cold weather, when
one's at home ? I wish I had never left it.
I have no money ; and I want to get home,
64

Seekers after Righteousness
home, home. What shall I do, O God ?
Father, I shall steal to you again, because
I did not use you rightly. Will you forgive
me? Do I ask that? ... I have come
through things that would make your heart
ache for me — things that I shall never tell to
anybody but you, and you shall keep them
secret as the grave. Get my own little room
ready — quick, quick : have it all tidy and
clean and cosy against my homecoming. I
wish to die there, and nobody shall nurse me
except my own dear mother, ever, ever again.
O home, home, home ! "
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst
after Righteousness, which is Christ, in such a
way as that : for they shall be filled.

65

THE MERCIFUL.

67

THE FIFTH BEATITUDE.
" BlesBed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy."
— St. Matt. v. 7.
" Blessed," "Blessed," "Blessed "—the itera
tion of the gracious word as the Beatitudes
go on is significant of much. When, at the
close of His earthly life, Jesus passed into
the Unseen, it was "while He blessed His
disciples that He was parted from them."
A chain of blessing bound together the
beginning and the end of His ministry. It
was all a positive Gospel which He taught.
Not fear nor self-interest was the motive
which He stirred. He appealed with the
winsomeness and the joy of goodness.
Those who have once heard the Commina-
tion Service which is used in the Church of
England on Ash Wednesday, the first day in
Lent, are not likely to wish ever to hear it
again. The minister is directed to read the
69

The Beatitudes
words, " Cursed is the man that maketh any
carved or molten image, to worship it."
"And the people shall answer and say,
Amen." Then the minister goes on :
" Cursed is he that curseth his father and
mother," and the response is made, " Amen."
Eight other curses follow, and an address of
terrifying severity. One feels in a different
world from that hillside where a benignant
and beautiful Being smiled upon the kind
souls that loved Him and were His friends,
and in the glorious" sunshine of an Eastern
day told them of the inner joy of goodness :
" Blessed," " Blessed," " Blessed."
The Beatitudes, and not the Commination
Service, contain the characteristic note of
the Christian Gospel. The stern sanctions
of the law indeed remain, and the awful facts
of life in which sin and punishment are
inextricably bound together. But the inspira
tion of character is no longer in the recital of
things forbidden : it is in an ideal that is
positive, spiritual, unworldly, and most fair.
It is this sense of being at the heart of
Christianity when we read the Beatitudes
70

The Merciful
which has made them fill so large a place
in the minds both of friends and of foes of
our faith. It is a curious fact that two
writers who have been among the most
influential forces in literature during the
past generation, Tolstoi and Nietzsche, have
each directed a keen interest upon the
Beatitudes, Nietzsche in a bitter and mocking
hatred, Tolstoi in a subservience of reverent
obedience almost slavish in its literalness.
There could not be a better illustration of
the feeling, which we all experience in some
degree, that here, in this part of our Lord's
teaching, we are dealing with the crucial
questions : we are touching the live heart of
the Gospel of Christ.
It may be that the blessing on the
merciful is of all the Beatitudes the most
characteristic, the most suggestive of the
original elements of the new religion. It
concentrates on itself the attention of friend
and foe of the faith. When people speak
familiarly of " a Christian spirit," they nearly
always mean a merciful and forgiving spirit.
When a great writer like the author of Ecce
71

The Beatitudes
Homo turned to a study of the Christian
Gospel, he found in this subject of Mercy
the theme of almost half his book. The
attraction of the Christian ideal to myriads of
men — and its repulsion for some others —
just lies in this, that we name our Master the
Man of Mercy.
The misunderstanding of this Beatitude
both by friend and foe would, however, have
been to some degree removed had there been
a proper insistence on the fact that every side
of human excellence is not suggested by
the blessing on the merciful.
Probably our Lord thought it unnecessary
to utter a Beatitude on common Honesty.
That, and the great virtues which the
moralists describe as the Cardinal Virtues —
Justice, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude —
are assumed to be the furniture of a good
man's mind. Much of the current criticism
of the Christian ideal would have been seen
to be unnecessary had it been taken for
granted that Jesus was dealing with reason
able men, and expecting their common sense
to supply the scaffolding of His ideals. This
72

The Merciful
very grace of mercifulness were worthless if
it were a mere thoughtiess and unregulated
emotion. Long before the day of our Lord,
the Psalmist had shown how in a complete
character " mercy and truth are met together,
righteousness and peace have kissed each
other." It may be difficult to draw the boundary
between the sphere of mercy and of truth,
and to show what a man's course should
be who wants to be kind, but is trying also
to be just. Most human graces are not like
a rectangular State of the American Union,
whose frontier is drawn in straight lines.
They are rather like the counties of old
England, where the boundaries follow, here
the bendings of a river, and there the
margin of a lake. Definitions are usually
difficult where the line of duty is concerned.
But Mercy and Truth meet each other easily
enough in life when the practical reason is
unhampered by casuistry and a wise
benevolence has its way.
Truth, of course, saves Mercy from being a
maudlin sentiment like that which snuffles in
73

The Beatitudes
a theatre over make-believe sorrow, but is
unrelated to the exigencies of life.
But the office of Truth is not to be a mere
check upon Mercy. " Why do you hate
that man ? " said one to Charles Lamb ; " you
do not even know him." " Of course I do
not know him," answered Lamb ; " for if I
knew him I probably should not hate him."
It is so that a better understanding of a
human life, with its difficulties and manifold
disadvantages, often takes the bitterness out
of the judgment we might pronounce.
There is no happier proof of this than in the
fact that mercy is a grace which grows with
growing years. The young are often hard.
Having seen little of life and its trials, they
pronounce swift censures on the failures.
But as we get older we are more considerate.
Mercy and Truth meet together.
Here is the explanation also of those
unrelenting judgments which even the
kindest are apt to pass on some offences.
Sir John Seeley quotes a modern novelist as
saying, " There are some wrongs that no one
ought to forgive, and I shall be a villain on
74

The Merciful
the day I shake that man's hand." Though
the words seem cruel and unchristian, there is
a feeling not dissimilar which many of us
cherish. Not to speak of those nearer to us,
there is a feeling that Sir Walter Scott's
Varney and Dalgarno,or Thackeray's Marquis
of Steyne, or Shakespeare's lago, ought not
to be forgiven — at least that we could not
bring ourselves to forgive them. Is not the
whole secret in this, that their characters being
what they were, we could not believe in their
being really penitent and asking forgiveness ?
If only we could be assured of that — if, that
is, we could really get at the truth about
them, would resentment continue unabated?
Would a Christian heart forget the lesson of
seventy times seven ?
The main consideration to keep in our
minds is, that the mercy of which Jesus spoke
is no mere pity or sympathy divorced from
intellectual judgment and deprived of moral
weight. It proceeds upon the use of the
minds God has given us. " Mercy and truth
are met together."
According to our Lord's teaching in two
75

The Beatitudes
memorable parables — the Good Samaritan
and the Unmerciful Servant — Mercy is mani
fested either in active benevolence and works
of charitable relief, or in a placable, generous,
and forgiving temper.
a. In a sorrowful world there is much need
for Good Samaritans. The plentiful abuses
which disfigure every society, even the most
civilised ; the cruelty of man to man, and of
man to the lower creatures ; and those
degrading and demoralising conditions which
seem to be the inevitable accompaniment of
industrial competition, call out for helpers.
There are many unselfish souls in every
community trying their best to remove or
alleviate such evils. On them the blessing
of the Lord is pronounced. Every visitor
of the sick and the poor, every manager of a
hospital, every director of a charity, has a
claim to some share in this Beatitude.
Such a merciful spirit is most seen within
the Christian Church ; but the law of mercy,
and the blessing on it, is irrespective of all
creeds. " Blessed are the merciful " — where-
ever they may be. 76

The Merciful
b. The parable of the Unmerciful Servant
— that story of the man who was hard and
vindictive towards his inferior at the very
time when his heart should have been melted
by the recollection of his own forgiveness — has
set in a lurid light the sin of an implacable
temper. Within the realm of such teaching
lies many an instructive word for the con
science of Christian men and women. Many
who would not break the more formal
commandments are lamentably lacking here.
We find our associates in some enterprise
very trying and difficult to do with. If our
minds work quickly we are impatient with
the low level of ability which is common.
In boards and committees and Church courts,
and in the intercourse of business, we
encounter men and women of irritable
tempers and absurd prejudices, people who
take offence where no offence is meant, and
exaggerate careless words into ridiculous
importance. If we have a talent for pungent
clevernesses we are tempted to its frequent
employment; and our whole critical attitude to
life tends to be that of satire. Blessed, indeed,
77

The Beatitudes
are we if gentler graces save our souls. Let
thoughts of home and wife and children be
often with us to sweeten things. Let some
ministry to the sick and the poor keep sweet
the human sympathies. When our frame is
the hardest let us try to look at the face of
Jesus, such as convention has painted it for
us and as we know it must have been. It is
told of Charles Dickens — who surely of all
English writers has most earned the Beatitude
upon the merciful — that he wrote concerning
a criticism of his on Tom Hood which had
appeared in the Examiner : " The book is
rather poor : but I have not said so : for
Hood is poor too, and ill besides." What a
new and most tender charm would come
both into letters and into life were such a
merciful spirit commoner than it is.
" Blessed are the merciful : for they shall
obtain mercy " : —
A learned commentator on this promise
has warned us to look for no barter in it, as
if the Lord had said, " If you treat another
man kindly he will be kind to you." That,
he points out, is not the real state of
78

The Merciful
affairs, not what happens in actual life. The
most merciful Man the world -has known was
murdered by an ungrateful race. Yet surely,
though such a reward does not always come,
there is sufficient experience to warrant the
promise even of an outward and a present
reward of mercy. A lady in a very prominent
place in what is called Society has had a won
derful tolerance extended to her, and an
explanation was once given of it. " I have
known Mrs K. all my life, and I never heard
her say a hard word against any one." There
are surely among the acquaintance of most of
us some such men and women who are popular
and sought after almost for no other reason
than that their thoughts of others are kindly,
and bitter criticisms are never on their lips.
Merciful, they obtain mercy.
Can we not think of others whose own
savage and merciless judgments have made
their life a long unhappiness and surrounded
them with enemies ? Everyone knows the
epitaph that is set over the grave of Jonathan
Swift in Dublin. " Here lies the body of
Jonathan Swift, where his fierce indignation
79

The Beatitudes
can tear his heart no more." Those who
can recall that morose and savage spirit, that
truculent and fierce career, are not willing to
banish into another world the reward of a
gentler virtue, " Blessed are the merciful :
for they shall obtain mercy."
In yet another sense than in the kindly
judgment of our contemporaries the merciful
obtain mercy every day. They train them
selves to generosity by the use of generosity.
The act goes before the habit and the frame
of mind. By pitying they learn to be pitiful.
Serene and happy lives the man who has
learned to think well of his friends and of
the world he lives in, who is not looking for
^faults or delighting in the mistakes or
offences of his fellows, whose mind instinc
tively takes a generous and a gentle view,
and whose heart is for ever overflowing in
the little tendernesses which make life
gracious and beautiful. The source of
happiness to others, that man is happy him
self. As Portia said in the famous passage,
which every preacher on Mercy must quote,
he is " twice blest." So

The Merciful
Then, last, when our minds expand beyond
the sphere of our earthly striving and see such
a man facing the unseen world, where "the
works of earth are tried by a juster Judge
than here," we know that he enters the
presence of the merciful Father as no alien
to His spirit, as no stranger to the courts
where pity and love have, their home.
" Blessed are the merciful : for they shall
obtain mercy." The bond of fellowship,
which a life of love has forged, is manifest
when the illusions of earth and the mis
understandings of men have disappeared.
At this point a resemblance between the
Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, which often
suggests itself to the student, becomes most
evident. " Forgive us our debts," we are
taught to pray, " as we forgive our debtors."
Even as early as the time of St. Chrysostom
there were men, he tells us, who would not
say that prayer in its completeness, and
omitted the phrase "as we forgive our
debtors." They dared not ask to be forgiven
as they forgave. As a man of hard and
unrelenting temper says the familiar words
f 8 1

The Beatitudes
to-day, as with a grudge against some offender
in his heart, and a lurking passion for revenge,
he asks to be forgiven as he forgives, the
dreadful impiety of the petition may well
startle his conscience into some self inquiry,
and the dread of the punishment he is
invoking may well send him to seek
reconciliation, and it may be friendship anew.
" Blessed are the merciful : for they shall
obtain mercy." They shall obtain it ; but
they need to show it no more. It is one of the
strangest pictures, and it is almost the saddest
picture, of a world of redeemed and sanctified
men that one of the gracious virtues of life is
needless any longer in that happy land. For
sorrow and sin are both done away, all that
excites compassion and all that cries for
forgiveness and lenient judgment, in the new
transfigured world, have disappeared, and
Mercy is swallowed up in the great broad
river of Love.

82

THE PURE IN HEART.

83

THE SIXTH BEATITUDE.
" Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see
God."— St. Matt. v. 8.
" Mysticism," said John Wesley once, " is
just heart religion." Here in the Sixth
Beatitude of Jesus is the essence of mysticism
— its aim to see God ; and its method, by
purity of heart. But, though one calls such
a type of religion by a name which suggests
theology and which has been appropriated to
describe a certain class of thinkers, mysticism
is really the religion of the great masses
of mankind. The permanent elements of
religion come to most men under a mystical
guise. It is not evidences and arguments
which are their origin, but the universal
instincts of the human soul. Unlettered
men perceive them ; poor sufferers on their
painful beds, hardly capable of consecutive
thought, cling to them with an assurance
which reason could never bring ; litde
«5

The Beatitudes
children have known them better than the
wise. " Wouldst thou plant for eternity ? "
said Carlyle, "then plant into the deep in
finite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart.
Wouldst thou plant for year and day ? then
plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his
self-love and arithmetical understanding.
Religion is planted in that which is deepest
in man. Therefore it lasts : and despite any
passing phase of doubt or criticism it will
last for ever.
" It is with the heart that a man believes."
The two most famous churchmen of France
in the twelfth century were St. Bernard of
Clairvaux and Peter Abelard. Of the two,
Abelard had by far the more alert, the subtler,
and the more brilliant mind. He was a
thinker and a teacher, while Bernard was
only a prophet. But who can doubt which
of the two saw most of things divine, and
which of the two has left for us to-day the
more precious legacy ? The criticism and
dialectic of Abelard, in advance of his time
as they were, have perished from the memory
of men, and his name is chiefly associated
86

The Pure in Heart
with a somewhat sordid love story ; while,
ever as men sing Bernard's hymn, "Jesus,
the very thought of Thee," they will know
the meaning of the Beatitude, "Blessed are
the pure in heart : for they shall see God."
It would indeed be wrong to fancy that
any slight is thus cast upon the great
disciplines by which the learned theologians
reach their results. The Beatitude gives no
honour to mental sloth. A man often says,
" I know," when he only means, " I am too
lazy to prove." The criticism of sacred books
and the labours of philosophy have a place
in furnishing " a reason for the hope that is
in us." Yet it is not by such a path that
we reach "the hope that is in us." The
simplest and most untutored soul may find
it, if only his heart be pure.
We believe that God made man in His
own image, and that man's soul is a mirror
in which the mind of God is reflected.
" Speak to Him, then, for He hears, and spirit with
spirit can meet ;
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands
and feet."
87

The Beatitudes
It is perhaps impossible to explain the
methods by which man thus sees his Maker :
this confident leap of the whole nature —
thought, emotion, will — in one sublime
affirmation. It is perhaps wisest for most
to say that here is an experience — a fact of
consciousness as sure as any in life. If one
seeks an analogy for it, some analogy may
be seen in our apprehension of poetry, or
beauty, or music, or human love.
There is a memorable passage in Plato's
apology, in which Socrates tells the result of his
questioning of the poets about their methods.
"Taking up some of their poems which seemed
to me most elaborately finished, I questioned
them as to their meaning. I am ashamed,
O Athenians, to tell you the truth ; however,
it must be told. Almost all who are present
could have given a better account of them
than they by whom they had been composed.
I soon discovered this, therefore, with regard to
the poets, that they do not effect their object by
wisdom, but by a certain natural inspiration."
Ask any great interpreter of nature about
the meaning of the outside world for the
88

The Pure in Heart
soul of man — read Wordsworth — and you
will find the same phenomenon : " Sensation,
soul, and form all melted in him " ; " Words
needed none ; his spirit drank the spec
tacle." Beauty and sublimity came in an
immediate apprehension utterly apart from
the logical understanding. It is as impossible
to describe in words, yet quite as sure a fact
of consciousness, as the love of man for
woman, or of woman for man — that great
source of human happiness, that turning-
point of the human tragedy, which yet has
no terminology which can be quoted without
exciting a smile.
In some such way might one illustrate the
vision of God. Man, because he is a spirit,
is able to commune with the Great Spirit ;
and we know the Father as by love and
fellowship we know an earthly friend. This
is the wonderful truth, so revolutionary, so
far reaching, which is at the root of the
Beatitude, " Blessed are the pure in heart :
for they shall see God."
If, then, man's nature be the mirror in
which the Divine is reflected, how essential
89

The Beatitudes
it becomes that the mirror should be
clean. A man whom the present writer knew
once spent a winter at Rome. He had intro
ductions to the inner circle of what is known as
" Black " society — the friends and supporters
of the Roman Catholic Church. The man
saw nothing of the antiquities of the famous
city, and gathered no intelligent views even
regarding its modern life. He could talk
fluentiy upon only one theme — the system of
lotteries ! He had looked on everything with
a gambler's eye. Thus, from the highest to
the lowest interests of life, it is true that
as a man is he sees. The gravest heresy
is not error of doctrine, but impurity of
life. Such a reflection may often bring comfort
to parents who are distressed to see their
children — young, anxious-minded, inquiring
— fall into doubt or even into denial of those
things which are the most precious in life,
the great truths of our faith. If a youth be
sincere and simple-minded, and truth-loving
and a clean liver, he will come through the
90

The Pure in Heart
shadows which rest for a time upon his belief
and will emerge into the clear day. It is
natural, and almost inevitable, that if a man
keep himself in the atmosphere of God — in the
life of righteousness — he will not always fail
to recognise the Great Companion who is by
his side.
Such an experience is abundantly confirmed.
"Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord ? " asked the Psalmist, " who shall stand
in His holy place ? " " He that hath clean
hands and a pure heart," was the answer.
Remember any time in our national life
when the best in our people has been
awakened — such a time as that of the last
great war— when the fire of patriotism burned
clear, and sympathy and pity for the fallen
and wounded soldiers were thrilling all hearts,
and the country stood consciously in the
presence of the great critical things of life :
was it not true that our religious life also
was keener, and we saw more manifestly
the hand of Providence in history ? With a
purified heart we learned to see God ?
Or let a man ask himself when his own
9i

The Beatitudes
faith was most vivid and he looked on life
most in the light of God's purity and truth ?
Was it not just when he was at his best :
when sorrow had softened him or gifts of
love had made him feel how good it was to
be alive ? Was it not when he stood by
the cradle of his litde child or by the coffin
where the dear dead lay ? Was it not when
he had had the grace to overcome a great
temptation or turn aside from a course he
knew to be evil though it allured ? Was it
not when he was most a man, that then also
he believed most firmly in God and saw
Him near ? It is with such experience that
life has confirmed the blessing on the pure
in heart.
Or why is it that, on the whole, women
have been more devout believers than men,
and have followed the Master with a simpler
faith ? Is it not just because, as a rule,
women are not so coarse in thought or
conduct as men, and they have found the
blessing on the pure ?
There is no use in illustrating the teaching
more. But the closer we get to the facts
92

The Pure in Heart
of life the more certain we become of this
great message of Jesus to men.
It is better to ask what is the road to
purity of heart? How shall the condition
of this Beatitude be gained ?
The answer must often be in terms of
that indirection which is so often the method
of Jesus. Do not seek happiness, and you
will be happy. Do not think about purity,
and you will be pure. Christina Rossetti,
when she set herself in one of her books to
write about the Seventh Commandment,
began with these suggestive words : " One
legitimate mode of treating our present
subject, and it may be not the least profitable
mode, is to turn our hearts and thoughts
away from it."
It is never well to allow the imagination
to dwell on evil things, even in the very
process of condemning them. So strange a
thing is human nature that a leering delight
can be found in the exposure and punish
ment of wickedness, and a man may be a
satyr in the guise of a militant saint. For
most people it is better to occupy them-
93

The Beatitudes
selves more with positive good than with
attacking wickedness. "Whatsoever things
are pure . . . think on these things." The
way to a pure heart is by the road of
absorption in unselfish duty.
But a certain standard of simplicity and
sincerity can be consciously set before one and
sedulously cultivated. A quaint illustration
of such a type of mind may be found in a
letter which George Washington wrote to his
friend Governor Morris, who was going to
Europe. Among other commissions, Wash
ington asked him "to buy him in Paris a
flat gold watch ; not the watch of a fool or
of a man desirous to make a show, but of
which the interior construction shall be ex
tremely well cared for, and the exterior air
very simple." It is not a bad standard for
a man as well as for a watch — " the interior
well cared for, the exterior air very simple."
Washington himself was a noble example of
such purity of heart. And the qualities of
which his letter gave so quaint and signifi
cant a suggestion, have in some measure
marked all men of the really highest type.
94

The Pure in Heart
Prayer is, however, the great appointed
instrument by which purity of heart is
retained or recovered. " Create in me a
clean heart, O God," we are taught to ask.
Here we are on the same level of ascertained
experience, on which it is wise to keep
while we are discussing a theme where the
risk of unreality or sentimental vagueness
is great. Let any man put to himself
the question, How is the bad in me most
subdued ? How do I reach the loftiest
aspirations ? How do I come near the
heart of God ? It is by the avenue of
Prayer. When Jesus promised to the pure in heart
that they should see God, He did not fix
the time of the blessed vision. Is it to be
here on the homely earth, or only beyond,
where they gaze with other clearer eyes ?
Surely we should answer — and all that has
been said has implied it — even here we
may see God. " He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father," said our Lord
Jesus. All good and holy men and women
have some testimony to give of their
95

The Beatitudes
knowledge of the heart of God in Jesus
Christ. In the last century there were two
teachers of the Church of England who live
in a very sacred memory for their sincerity
and guilelessness, their generous enthusiasm,
their purity of heart. They were Dean
Stanley and Charles Kingsley. Of Kingsley
it is recorded that on his deathbed he seemed
to have some glimpse of the Beatific Vision,
for he exclaimed, " How beautiful is God."
And the last sermon which Stanley preached
was on the text, "Blessed are the pure in
heart : for they shall see God." He preached
it on the 8th July 1 88 1 ; and he died on
the 1 8 th of the same month. The last words
of that sermon speak of " the single eye and
the pure conscience which are an indispensable
condition of having the doors of our minds
open and the channel of communication kept
free between us and the supreme and eternal
fountain of all purity and of all goodness."
Thus, even here on earth, the pure in heart
are blessed with such an inward gift of God
as " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor
hath it entered into the heart of man to con-
96

The Pure in Heart
ceive." But we may well believe, also, that
a fuller vision is yet to come. " Here we
see through a glass darkly, here we know in
part." But when, through the training of
the years the faculties of the spirit have been
disciplined and enlarged, when death has
removed every disturbing medium of sense,
the Divine which is so often shadowy and
indistinct will glow before surprised and
adoring eyes in a beauty of which now we
can hardly dream, and the Providence over
life which speaks to us now so often only
with hints obscure and difficult to interpret,
will win us to an awed recognition of its
mercy and its love.
"I'll bless the hand that guided, I'll bless the heart
that planned,
When throned where glory dwelleth, in Immanuel's
land."
" Then we shall know even as we are
known." " It doth not yet appear what we
shall be ; but we know that when He shall
appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see
Him as He is."
G 97

The Beatitudes
" Father of Jesus, love's reward,
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee."
Well may St. John comment after He had
made the glorious promise of that Vision of
God : " Every man that hath this hope in
him, purifieth himself even as He is pure."

98

THE PEACEMAKERS.

99

THE SEVENTH BEATITUDE.
" Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called
the children of God." — St. Matt. v. 9.
There is something arbitrary in most
attempts to trace a connection between the
Beatitudes, and to discern in them an inter
related scheme of character. But when one
deals with the blessing upon the Peacemakers
it is abundantly evident that its true place is
after the blessing on the pure in heart. St.
James, with his practical judgment, saw this
when he declared that " the wisdom that is
from above is first pure, then peaceable."
In more picturesque language the same con
nection of thought is made manifest in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, where that romantic
figure of early history, Melchisedek, is de
scribed as " first king of righteousness, and
after that king of peace."
Every one who reads the Bible in the
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The Beatitudes
light of his own heart can find experiences
which make that connection between right
eousness and peace sufficiently clear. If a
family is what it ought to be, there is
authority and a well-ordered home life as
the basis of the family happiness. Because,
in too many modern homes, indulgence has
come before rule, and parents have thought
of what would please before they settled
what was right, the old home life is in danger
of decay. In a school, in a university, there
will be no good work done unless discipline
be steadily placed before teaching. Right
relations must be established before happy
results will come. It is such familiar things
of life which have made the solemn doctrine
of the Atonement, with all its difficulties of
statement, appeal to men's minds as conson
ant with things as they are. First righteous
ness, then peace : explain it how you will,
goodness must first be vindicated before man
can be reconciled with God or his neighbour
or himself.
This connection of the Beatitude on the
Peacemakers with that which immediately
1 02

The Peacemakers
precedes it, makes it clear that if a man is
to be of any use in mediating peace to the
world it must be because his own heart
has been brought into conformity with the
highest. " First keep thyself in peace," said
St. Thomas a Kempis, " and then thou shalt
be able to keep peace among others." The
source of such a serenity of a calm and self-
controlled spirit is in fellowship with God in
Jesus Christ our Lord.
The God of Peace is the noble New
Testament name of the Father. Seven times
in the Epistles, St. Paul recurs to the phrase
the " God of Peace," and he sets the gift of
peace in the midst of the benediction in the
thrice Holy name. St. Paul's summary of
the interests of the Kingdom of God is
"righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost." It is indeed true that in an earlier revela
tion the Lord had been described as a man
of war : and there was a truth also, not
merely temporary, in that awful name. Mr.
Disraeli once answered a deputation of the
Peace Society by saying to them, " I believe
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The Beatitudes
in the God of Hosts " ; and if we see an over
ruling providence in history, we also must
recognise that, even as great storms clear the
air of the world and make it a wholesomer
place to live in, so it has been through
human strife that a way has often been
found to a peace with which honourable and
right-minded men could be satisfied. When
Benjamin Franklin said that "there never
was a good war or a bad peace," he offended
against a just interpretation of history ; he
uttered a sentiment as absurd as if he had
said that it never was good to arrest a
criminal, and it never was bad to let the
wicked have their will. As the world is
constituted, force must sometimes be used on
the side of righteousness, and God can be
called now, as in the times of early revelation,
the God of Hosts.
Yet that is not, nor ever has been, his
characteristic name. He is the God of
Peace. When the fulness of glory was
manifested among men it was in the person
of the "Prince of Peace," at whose birth
the angels sang of "peace on earth," and
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The Peacemakers
who, ere His passing hence, left as a legacy
to mankind a gift of the " Peace " which had
been His own.
If, then, a man's nature be in fellowship
with God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ,
the trend of his character also must be
toward conciliation, co-operation, brother
hood, love. He must see that the spirit of
contention and strife is no worthy offering to
the Lord whom he worships and would serve.
It is strange that, even in the Church of
Christ, there have been men who did not
see this. There have been — there are —
Churchmen who are firebrands and men of
war from their youth. Aggressiveness is in
the very cut of their face and in the note of
their voice in the most ordinary talk. Their
boast is that of Alan Breck in Stevenson's
famous story, that they are " bonny fechters,"
and their happiness is keenest when con
troversy is high. God forbid that anyone
should say that these are the worst of men.
They are better than the sluggards, who are
only peaceable because, as they say, they " like
a quiet life " : they are better than the cowards
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The Beatitudes
who will not risk the unpopularity or the un
pleasantness that the defence of truth or the
overcoming of iniquity will ever involve.
But they who merely revel in disputes have
much to learn before they win to the spirit
of Christ or gain the blessing which He offers
to the Peacemakers, that they shall be called
the Sons of God.
It was this feeling, doubtless, which made
a great teacher like St. Augustine content to
accept the translation of the Beatitude as it is
given in the Vulgate, " Blessed are the Peace
able." If a man's own nature has not ceased
from warfare, he is ill equipped for that
ministry of reconciliation to which they are
commanded who are in fellowship with Christ.
The correct translation, however, is,
"Blessed are the Peacemakers." And a
larger call is made upon Christian men than
only to find peace in their own hearts. We
must be ambassadors of Christ's peace to
the world.
I. What of controversy in politics, in the
Church, in social life ? Controversy must
exist while minds are diverse ; and in many
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The Peacemakers
respects it is wholesome. A Peacemaker
can engage in it with a clear conscience.
His love of peace, however, will regulate the
methods with which controversy is carried
on. All irrelevant personalities will be hate
ful to him, and he will argue to convince
and not to stab or wound. Sure of his own
position, he yet will try to understand the
position of his adversary. And deliberate
misinterpretation or appeals to prejudice will
form no part of his methods. Difference of
opinion so expressed need make no breach
of friendship, need injure no human
relationship. It is probable that when
Barnabas and Paul differed, it was a real
quarrel, and they parted less good friends
than they had been— though a happy recon
ciliation was to come. But when Peter had
been tampering with principle at Antioch,
Paul "withstood him to the face," because
he was to be blamed ; and we do not read
that their honest argument affected the terms
on which the two great and magnanimous
souls stood to each other. In a democratic
country like ours great honour is due to
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The Beatitudes
those who keep the temper of controversy
good, and who carry the spirit of the Peace
maker into public life with its dignifying,
sweetening power.
II. The Industrial Community, so often
cursed with stupid strikes and labour wars,
is learning also, and will learn better, the
value of the Peacemaker. There is hardly a
better test of a big man than that he is
naturally sought for as an arbitrator, trusted
by both sides for his judgment and fairness
of mind. To an increasing extent such
arbitrators will win a position in modern
life. There are few better names than that
of the chairman of a Church court in
Scotland. He is called the Moderator.
Such moderators in civil affairs, calming
loud-voiced or angry altercation, bringing
order out of confused dispute, themselves
unruffled, impartial, are most useful memhers
of any community. The machinery of life
is apt to get heated while it works so swiftly.
Blessed are they who oil the wheels : Blessed
are such Peacemakers.
III. When it comes to interference with
1 08

The Peacemakers
private or domestic quarrels, a wise man
will show the prudence which tells him that
the way to peace is often the policy of
Non-intervention. A meddler is often a
muddler. He who intervenes between
relatives, and especially between husband
and wife, has often to discover that he
has helped no one, and has only added to
the discomfort of all, not excluding himself.
The author of the Book of Proverbs does not
always rise to the highest level of inspiration,
but he had a shrewd knowledge of human
life when he said : " He that passeth by and
meddleth with strife not belonging to him, is
like one that taketh a dog by the ears."
Vanity has made some people fancy that
they were called to the office of Peace
maker in cases when their wisdom would
have been to abstain.
It must not, however, be supposed that
Christian folk have no duty at all in these
particulars. In our social life there are two
courses especially which every good man or
woman should resolutely follow.
(a) The first is to hate all tale-bearing and
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The Beatitudes
malicious gossip. No worse disturber of
the peace of homes exists than the idle
retailer of unpleasant criticisms. There are
three levels of conversation. The highest
is talk about ideas ; the second highest is talk
about things ; the lowest is talk about per
sons. Beyond this lowest level many people
hardly care to rise. It is not that they are
malicious only, though some evil spirits
delight in any gossip which will cause pain.
It is chiefly that they are empty-minded and
thoughtless, and do not realise the harm that
their reckless chatter works. Against all
such evil gossip a Peacemaker sets his face
like a flint. Among the seven things which
the Book of Proverbs says God hates, one is
" He that soweth discord among brethren."
If a bad story comes to a Peacemaker he
will refuse to believe it while he can, and he
will abstain from repeating it to the last. If,
however, some story of kindness and hero
ism and self-denial comes to him, he will
blaze that abroad. For the world is a better
place for its good tales of human brotherhood
and love.
no

The Peacemakers
(b) In quiet ways also a man of a peace
able spirit can do much to compose troubles
and to disseminate the spirit of consideration.
A man comes to us ruffled arid out of temper
on account of some slight he has suffered :
we can ask him — as Dr. Johnson asked
Boswell in such circumstances, to "bethink
himself how the matter will appear twelve
months hence." Or he shows us an angry
letter he has written, full of clever jibes and
thrusts and bitternesses : we can urge him
not to send the letter for a day or a week ; we
can divert his mind to other matters till the
annoyance which prompted it has passed away.
The Peacemaker's influence in such respects
is moral rather than intellectual. One
can rarely argue a man out of a temper.
One can often compose him out of it in the
presence of better and kinder thoughts.
Such thoughts melt the frozen heart as the
sunshine of spring is the solvent of the snow.
Blessed indeed are such Peacemakers. By
their very presence they are continually,
though unconsciously , making people think
better of themselves, of humanity, even of
1 1 1

The Beatitudes
God. They live in the presence of ideals
which make angry disputes seem mean.
And the peace which keeps their own hearts
and minds radiates a benediction upon all
they know.
" Blessed," said our Lord, " are the Peace
makers : for they shall be called the sons of
God." Sons of God indeed they are : but
also they will be recognised and owned and
called by their right name. It may not be
at the first. Then the keen fighter for his
side arouses the cheers of his fellow com
batants, and the protagonist is the hero of the
crowd. It may not be at the first. Then
the Peacemaker is called other names than a
son of God ; he is called "Trimmer," or
even "Traitor." But when the dust of
battle sinks, and the noise and tumult of war
die into silence, and men ask (after a century)
who were the figures which stand out from
the time as most venerable, the best servants
of their generation ? it will not always be the
redoubtable champions of a party — though to
them also honour is due — it will be the holy
and humble men of heart who were thinking
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The Peacemakers
of larger interests than those of a sect or a
political cause, who where looking to the
welfare of the State or the Church of the
Lord Jesus Christ, who were striving for that
unity for which the Saviour prayed, and who
loved peace and laboured after it with all the
power of their generous hearts.
Such are the men — it would be easy to
name some of them — in the Church and in the
State whom, as we look back over the years,
we venerate the most. Jesus the Son of God
was also the Prince of Peace, and we call those
men * sons of God ' because they were like
Him. Now that all branches of the Christian
Church in Scotland, as in Canada and Australia,
are awake to the scandal of our unhappy
divisions, and the evils wrought by the long
war which Christian folk have waged with
one another, we have no use for fighters,
and quarrellers, and bitter speakers, and cruel
hinters any more. We are looking with
an affectionate longing for the man who
will repair the broken walls of the city of
God, and earn for himself the blessing which
is the Peacemaker's due.
H 113

The Beatitudes
When a small company, of whom the
writer was one, buried Archibald Forbes, the
distinguished war correspondent, whose life
had been one long adventure, and who had
seen as much fighting as any man of his time,
we chose as the hymn to sing over him, ere
his worn-out frame was laid to its long rest,
the verses —
" No longer hosts encountering hosts
Shall crowds of slain deplore ;
They hang the trumpet in the hall,
And study war no more."
It was not only the thought of the war-worn
veteran's rest that came to one's mind as
thus we sang ; it was the vision of the strifes
which have desolated society, the contro
versies which have been the scandal of the
Church, the disputes which have alienated the
tenderest ties of home — all stilled, composed,
for ever at an end. Must it be only Death
that shall work such a consummation ? Is it
not possible even here in our pleasant land
to see Jerusalem, the city of peace, reared
once again fair as ever, ere her battiements
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The Peacemakers
were hurled down in internecine struggles and
her streets defiled with the blood of brethren ?
We live in times when the Peacemaker is
coming to his own. If not in our time, or
our children's, yet for the Church and for
society the sons of God will make strange
and happy things to be.
"Down the dark future through long generations
The sounds of war grow fainter and then cease,
And like a bell with solemn sweet vibrations,
I hear the voice of Jesus Christ say, * Peace '."

«5

THE PERSECUTED.

117

THE EIGHTH BEATITUDE.
" Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteous
ness' sake : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." — St.
Matt. v. io.
It is the difficulty of all expositors of the
Beatitudes that any exposition seems un
necessary. "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper- light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
Some such feeling gives pause to the homilist
who ventures to make more plain and con
vincing the Master's words : "Blessed are
the merciful," or " Blessed are the pure."
The eighth Beatitude, however — the bless
ing on the persecuted — makes no such im
mediate and obvious appeal. For that reason,
119

The Beatitudes
as well as for the reason that it is not so
plainly spiritual as the others, it is not always
reckoned in the number of those sayings of
Jesus which we call His Beatitudes.
Yet it well deserves a place beside the
other seven. It is really as spiritual as the
rest. Though it seems to refer to outward
condition rather than to character, it must
not be supposed to teach that persecution
itself makes a man blessed : everything
depends upon the motive for which the
suffering is met and the spirit in which
the suffering is borne. " It is the cause,"
said St. Augustine once, "which makes
the martyr." Our Lord would have
uttered no benediction on those servants
of His who provoked a useless persecution,
and, in the pride of a self-conscious virtue,
threw away their lives in vain. The blessing
on the persecuted is a blessing on the inward
and spiritual graces of wisdom and fortitude
and faith.
If there be some truth in the criticism that
this Beatitude does not so immediately
as the others convince with the clear-cut
120

The Persecuted
simplicity of an aphorism, and our Lord
Himself needed to amplify and explain it,
yet, when it does reach the mind and the
heart, it is as characteristic of the Master's
teaching as any of the rest.
This is a word of Jesus which our distance
from His time and His surroundings makes
less vivid in its appeal to our imagination.
When we say " persecution " we think of an
unpleasant letter in the newspapers, or the
rudeness of some acquaintance, or the petty
spitefulness of society. When Jesus said
"persecution," He spoke to twelve men of
whom only one was to die in his bed. If we
would understand what being " persecuted "
meant when Jesus spoke of it, we should read
the eleventh chapter of 2 Corinthians, with its
breathless record of the sufferings of St. Paul.
It was in view of such penalties of their
discipleship that Jesus pronounced His
followers blessed, and exhorted them to
« Rejoice." Here is the great wonder of it. Every
other leader of men, who has had a heart at
all, has grieved over the distress which he was
121

The Beatitudes
bringing upon his friends even in a good
cause. Mazzini deplored the desolation
and sorrow which the glorious struggle
for freedom was to spread over Italy.
But Jesus saw the torturer and the execu
tioner stand beside His well-beloved, and
He said, "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad."
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness' sake." Far from being un
worthy of a place among the Beatitudes, this
blessing on the righteous sufferer is one of
the most startling pronouncements as to the
meaning of the Gospel.
Those who read the great evangelic
prophecy which runs through the fortieth to
the sixty-sixth chapters of Isaiah have ever
been accustomed to find in it a subtle inter
pretation of the sacrifice of Jesus. These
chapters might almost be summarised in the
saying, " Blessed are they which are persecuted
for righteousness' sake." When Jesus Him
self said, " If any man will come after Me, let
him take up his cross and follow Me," He
showed that persecution in some sense was
the normal condition of the Christian. St.
122

The Persecuted
Timothy was told the same truth by his
leader in later days, " All that will live godly
in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."
There is not a note of depression in one
of these utterances. To suffer for righteous
ness' sake, and to be glad of it, is the account
of Christian experience which seems to them
all the natural and the happy lot.
How shall we bring this down to the
conditions of modern life, when the martyr
fires are no longer kindled, and museums
hold the iron boot and the thumb-screws ?-
Do men, as a matter of fact, still suffer
persecution for righteousness' sake, and find
it blessed ?
There is no more certain fact of life than
that they do. There are some sections of
society, at the top and at the bottom, where
every condition is antagonistic to what is
altruistic, generous, refined. No one doubts
that there are large circles of society where it
is difficult to be a Christian, and where the
man or woman who tries to be a Christian
suffers for it. Even the very presence of
an unworldly piety excites dislike in certain
123

The Beatitudes
bosoms. When it proceeds to be aggressive,
as it must when it is genuine, a fierce and
deadly hatred is aroused.
The forms of persecution change : its
essence remains unchanged. " The honour
able and religious gentleman," a slaveholding
member of Parliament nicknamed William
Wilberforce. Innuendo and all the arts of
the traducer and defamer are wielded still
by the enemies of righteousness when their
vested interests are attacked and their selfish
or vicious pleasures are denounced. Such
opposition is the lot of every reformer.
The weak and the unprincipled yield before
it. The dread of unpopularity breaks their
will. There is nothing sadder in the public
life of our country than the haunting note
which runs through the speeches of many
politicians in all parties — the note of fear.
These men speak, not as men who are think
ing out great questions and telling the result
of their thought in plain speech, but as men
who have an eye on the ballot-box and will
risk anything rather than the loss of a vote.
If the Church also has to some extent
124

The Persecuted
forfeited the confidence of the country, it is
because she also has been afraid of persecu
tion, because for fear of causing alarm, or of
making good people angry, her ministers and
her teachers have kept silent over matters
which every educated man knows have
seriously affected her attitude to the Bible
and to other solemn matters of the faith.
"The fear of man bringeth a snare." And
in every department of life it is one of the
commonest enemies of righteousness.
That is one fact of experience. The other
is this : that the men who are able to
overcome such fear and to suffer persecution
for righteousness' sake enjoy a satisfaction,
an exhilaration, a zest of life well worthy of
being called Blessedness. Paul and Silas
singing in the prison-house — their limbs in
chains and the hard floor for their bed, yet
with the joy in their hearts of being on the
right side and fighting for it — they are for
ever the type of that highest happiness of
which this Beatitude tells. Our human
nature has sorrowful features in it, and there
are many indulgence seekers and shirkers and
125

The Beatitudes
cowards. But there is also something heroic
in human nature which responds to the call
to hardship.
What is the best appeal to win men to be
missionaries to the heathen ? Shall we tell
them of a good salary, and a warm climate,
and frequent furloughs ? We shall never
get a man worth sending by such an appeal.
But bid them think of a lonely life amid
fever and squalidness, and of a slow dis
heartening struggle to bring to Christ a
native people sunk in superstitions and
bound by horrible customs, and we shall
get the right men to seek such a life of
hardship. Thank God, the Church has got them.
Hard work and unpleasant surroundings and
opposition are not real deterrents to any
profession, to any demand upon human
energy. Often, indeed, they are the opposite :
and a man is never more himself, and never
happier, than when he is fighting with his
back to the wall against heavy odds.
"Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I."
126

The Persecuted
There are, perhaps, few of us who have not
had some such exhilarating experience and
who do not know how true the Lord's words
are : " Blessed are they which are persecuted
for righteousness' sake."
The fuller elaboration of this Beatitude
makes it easier than in the case of the other
seven to trace the elements of gladness and
satisfaction which are promised.
I. First : theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Once more, as to the poor in spirit, the
assurance is given that the most precious
rewards of life are not a distant gleam of
glory, but the present possession of a faithful
soul. "The way to heaven is through
heaven, and all the way to heaven is heaven,
and only the heavenly sh„ll enter heaven."
The man who is persecuted for righteousness'
sake knows himself as in alliance with the
spiritual forces which are the redemption of
the world.
His very persecution tells him that ; for
it makes him recognise that he is making
something of it and winning his way. As a
ship passes out from the harbour heads, and
127

The Beatitudes
meets the open sea, she tosses and rolls amid
the great ocean billows ; but every buffet of
them is a message of her conquest over
obstacles, every strain and pitch and plunge
tell of her triumphal march towards her
goal. As St. Paul saw the furious mob at
Ephesus or the murderous Jews at Antioch
or Iconium, he must have taken a quiet
comfort from their rage. It told him that,
whether they liked his teaching or not, at
least they were thinking of it, and studying
it, and had the sense to see that it was re
volutionary, and that he was "turning the
world upside down." Their persecution
made him a hundred times happier than
the polite insouciance of the Athenian
crowd. There are two kinds of opposition — the
opposition of the stone wall which the cannon
shot knocks to splinters when it strikes, and
the opposition of the earth redoubt into
which the balls sink with a dull thud and
against which they make hardly any impres
sion at all. It is the second kind of opposi
tion which is the more formidable. If a man
128

The Persecuted
sees himself hated and reviled and persecuted,
he knows at least that the power of the truth
he holds dear is being felt and understood ;
and, since he cares for nothing so much as
for that, a happy man is he. There is no
experience better described as being in " the
Kingdom of Heaven."
II. Our Lord goes on to say, " Blessed are
ye when men shall revile you, and persecute
you, and say all manner of evil against you
falsely, for my sake " : and surely He suggests
a very deep source of human joy by the
thought that we are privileged to suffer some
thing for Him. All love wants to sacrifice,"^
and looks for an opportunity to delight itself
by suffering. The awkward lad who spends
a week's wages on a gift to his sweetheart ;
the mother who sits up all night beside her
sick and peevish child, seeking no more than
the opportunity of lavishing care and affection
on the unresponsive creature : these are on
the ascending scale of love, which, when
it reached the highest, gave a well-beloved
Son for a world of sinful men. The purest
happiness is in this. " Remember," said St.
I 129

The Beatitudes
Paul, reporting words of the Master which
the evangelists somehow had strangely
missed — " Remember the words of the Lord
Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to
give than to receive." It is such a blessed
ness which the persecuted know : they have
the opportunity of doing something — or
bearing something — for Christ's sake, and
it is the proudest privilege which mortals
know. III. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, the
Master went on to say, " For so persecuted
they the prophets which were before you."
Every sufferer for righteousness' sake is set
in a great line — the goodly fellowship of the
prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the
saints of all ages (as of our own) who have
seen that active goodness awakens the
animosity of worldly men and brings trouble
back to brave and faithful souls. The story
of the world's ingratitude is a black page ;
and in it there is one spot, the blackest,
where the name of the Crucified is written.
But the letters on it are all of gold. " He
loved His race : He tried to teach and help
130

The Persecuted
and save it ; and He suffered for it " — that
is the record of some of the world's best.
"Look back along the great names of
history," wrote Mr. Froude in one of those
Short Studies which will remain, in the
judgment of the wise, among the foremost
essays in the English language ; " there is
none whose lot has been other than this.
They to whom has been given the really
highest work on earth to do — whoever they
were, warrior, philosopher, legislator, poet,
priest, slave — one and all their lot has been
the same : the same bitter cup has been given
to them all to drink." As humble men and
women meet petty persecution, and are
called by foolish nicknames, and feel the
multitudinous pin-pricks of social dis-
agreeablenesses, is it not something for
them to feel that they also are of the
company of the world's greatest ? " So
persecuted they the prophets which were
before you."
Such reverence for the holy and brave
who have gone before us, such loyalty to
their memory, such comradeship with their
131

The Beatitudes
aims, is one of the loftiest incentives to the
Christian life.
" O the way sometimes is low,
And the waters dark and deep,
And I stumble as I go.
But I have a tryst to keep;
It was plighted long ago,
With some who lie asleep.
And though days go dragging slow,
And the sad hours gravewards creep,
And the world is hushed in woe,
I neither wail nor weep,
For He would not have it so,
And I have a tryst to keep."
IV. They little know the mind of the
Master, who shut out from His teaching
the last element of blessedness which this
Beatitude contains — a promise for the future.
" Great," said He, " is your reward in heaven."
Not in the Sermon on the Mount only, but
often in other discourses, he called His
disciples' thought beyond the scene of our
earthly striving to a serene land where a
132

The Persecuted
throne is set for the conqueror and a crown is
brought for his brow, and a glory not of earth
is his everlasting portion. We know not
what outward conditions are represented by
language so figurative, so deeply tinged
with the colours of earth : but it is idle to
banish from the message of Jesus the hope
for the righteous of a reward.
His best and most unselfish servants
gloried in it. "If we suffer," wrote St.
Paul to his pupil and associate — " if we suffer
we shall also reign with Him." Those who
understand the human heart at all, see
nothing sordid in the dream. For what is
the reward — what is the crown of glory —
which such holy souls have believed was
waiting them beyond the grave ? They can
but express it in -terms of material things, and
hint at it vaguely in the gorgeous imagery of
the senses : but it was no selfish enjoyment
they were looking for : no " enjoyment "
in any sense which ordinary thought attaches
to the word. It was to be with Christ : in
some way, which even fancy refuses to out
line, to see His blessed face, to dwell in the
133

The Beatitudes
presence of the ineffably Good and Fair.
Because Jesus was the despised and rejected
of men, because men reviled Him and per
secuted Him, and spoke all manner of evil
against Him falsely, therefore all who are
persecuted for righteousness' sake feel that, in
such an experience, they are being disciplined
into His likeness, and they rejoice at their
hard lot, not because one day it is to be made
easier, but only because it is the way which
leads them nearer Him,
Does a student love less the profession he
has chosen, and for which he is being trained,
because he hopes some day to exercise it
nobly for the good of his fellows, and to
make some mark in the world through it
before he dies ? Does a man love less his
promised wife because he looks with eager
and happy expectancy to the marriage day
when he can claim her for his own ? Shall
we be such bloodless servants and followers
of Christ that we are stirred by no vision of
the home country of His saints, and find no
alleviation of the hardships and self-denials
which His service may entail in His own
134

The Persecuted
assured promise of a reward, " a hundredfold
now in this present time, and in the world to
come life everlasting."
Those moralists deal with other creatures
than with men, who bid us banish from our
minds even a beautiful and unselfish con
ception ot heavenly happiness. The Lord
Himself knew man's nature, and He animated
faith and hope by His benediction on the
persecuted, " Rejoice and be exceeding glad ;
for great is your reward in heaven."

«35

APPENDIX.
Some Additional Reading.
No one should approach an exegetical study
of the Beatitudes -without some knowledge of
the questions of Biblical Criticism which are
involved. For example : how are the eight
Beatitudes of St. Matthew related to the
four of St. Luke ? It was maintained by a
great father (St. Ambrose) that the two sets
are virtually identical. But the whole
question needs working out. It is sufficient
to guide the reader to the learned discussion
of this aspect of the Beatitudes in Hastings'
"Dictionary of the "Bible, the Extra Volume,
page 15 and ff. ; and the Dictionary of
Christ and the Gospels, page 176 and ff.
Every exegetical commentary on the
Gospels devotes some space to the Beatitudes.
Such a book as Wendt's 'Teaching of Jesus
sets the Beatitudes in their relation to the
whole message of our Lord.
137

Appendix
There is no more suggestive treatment of
these themes in English than the relevant
chapters in Bishop Gore's book, The Sermon on
the {Mount. But the late Dr. Oswald Dykes
is fuller and more practical in his ^Manifesto
of the Kjng. In a volume of sermons by the
late Dr. Leckie, entitled Life and Hfjligion,
seven discourses are devoted to the Beatitudes.
(Like many others, Dr. Leckie reckoned that
there were seven, not eight, sayings deserving
of the title.) The late Professor A. B. Bruce
devotes two chapters of his popular yet very
able vrork,The Galilean Qospel,to the Beatitudes.
Simpler but not less helpful are the four
sermons in the late Dean Stanley's Sermons
to Children. A ponderous volume, entitled
The Charter of Christianity, published in 1886
by Andrew Tait, D.D., LL.D., a Canon of the
Church of Ireland, gives 76 of its 628 pages
to the Beatitudes. Bishop Boyd Carpenter
has a volume of sermons on the subject, The
Great Charier of Christ; and Bishop C. J.
Ridgeway has a volume, The Mountain of
"Blessedness. On the word 'Beatitude itself, which does
138

Appendix
not occur in the Bible, see Trench's Study of
Words. On the proper rendering of /junc'dpio? see
Montefiore's The Synoptic Gospels, from the
point of view of scholarship, and from the
far more important point of view of spiritual
insight, the 9th chapter of the Second Book
of Sartor 'Rjsartus.

'39

INDEX.

SUBJECTS.

PAGE

PAGE

Abelard

. 86

Melchisedek .

. 101

Advertisement

44

Mysticism

. 8S
Aspiration
58
Persecution
. 124
Cardinal Virtues .
• 72
St. Bernard
. 86
Cold Morality
• SS
Seriousness
• 23
Commination Service
• 69
Simplicity
10
Controversy .
. 106
Sorrow .
• 19
Counterfeits of Meeknes
3 35
Rewards
I3i 134
Dependence on God
n
Riches .
5
Manhood
7
Unity .
• "3
Marked New Testament
Si
War .
. 104
(
2UOTA
TIONS.
Augustine, St. . t
3, 120
Mazzini
. 122
Browning
59
Napoleon
• 4i
Bushnell, Horace .
62
Newman, Cardinal
21
Carlyle .
86
Rossetti, Christina
• 93
Church, Dean
55
Seeley, Sir John
14. 74
Dickens
78
Shakspere
. 119
Disraeli, Benjamin
. 103
Smith, George Adi
un . 19
' Eliot, George ' .
23
Socrates
. 88
Franklin, Benjamin
104
Stanley, Dean
• 43
Froude, J. A.
131
Stevenson, R. L.
. 105
Gore, Bishop
27
Taylor, Jeremy
8
Gray, David .
64
Tennyson
. 87
Hume, David
45
Tolstoi .
. 29
Jc-hnson, Samuel .
9, 111
Toplady, A. M.
12
A'Kempis, Thomas
103
Washington . .
. 94
Lamb .
74
Watt, L. M.
. 132
Leckie, Joseph
61
Wesley, John
• 8S
Longfellow .
28
Wordsworth .
. 89
Massillon . . •
30
141
THE
SHORT COURSE SERIES
EDITED BY
Rev. JOHN ADAMS, B.D.

This Series is designed to encourage a healthy re
action in the direction of expository preaching.
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