mere tools of other men; or for the diseased, because they were necessarily miserable; or for paupers, because they had not a sufficiency of this world’s goods; or for those dying young, because they had not time enough to realize true blessedness. Observe, I say, the contrast in all this. Christ lays the blessed life open to all. And why? Because he takes a man at once up to God: He centres his life on God: He puts him in full view of God as the goal of life: He bases life on God as a foundation. Again, as a consequence of this, He calculates life—as a life lived in God must be calculated—on the scale of eternity. Grant these two things—that each human life may be based on God and calculated on the scale of eternity—and you get rid of all the limitations which made Aristotle declare that neither the slave, nor the diseased, nor the poor, nor those who die young, can live the blessed life. Thus our Lord has described the character of true blessedness as belonging to man as man, to all men if they will have it, simply by the recognition of their true relation to God. From that point of view all accidents of life fade away into insignificance. They give, indeed, its special character to each life, and the conditions of its probation, but they cannot touch its true blessedness.

      We can go one step farther. If you take the latter parts of the beatitudes, you will find in them a more detailed account of the blessed life. The end of each beatitude tells us what our Lord meant by blessedness. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven; they shall be comforted; they shall inherit the earth; they shall be filled; they shall obtain mercy; they shall see God; they shall be called sons of God.” All the last six of these seven expressions may be said simply to expand the first. They amplify the idea of membership in the kingdom of heaven. Membership in the kingdom is a life of perfect relationship with man and nature based on perfect fellowship with God. That is true blessedness, and that is open to all. Therein is consolation after all troubles; there is the freedom to move about with a sense of heirship in God’s world, as in our legitimate heritage and with no fear of being turned out; there is the satisfaction of all legitimate aspiration; there is gracious acceptance at all hands; there is the vision of all truth and beauty and goodness, in God; there is final and full recognition. That is true blessedness. That is the life which our Lord promises to every one who will simply put himself in the right relation to God.

      3. There is only one more point that we need notice with regard to these beatitudes as a whole, and it concerns their order. Our Lord begins with strong paradoxes: Blessed are the poor—the mourners—the meek. That is to say in other words, He first describes the true character by its contrast to the character of the world. We frequently have occasion to use the expression “the world.” Let me, therefore, once for all explain what I understand by it when it is used in a bad sense. It means, of course, not God’s creation as such, which was pronounced very good. When “the world” is spoken of in a bad sense—the worldly world—you may define it in this way: it is human society organizing itself apart from God. That is what in the Bible is meant by “the world.” Well, the world notoriously clutches at all the gold it can get. The world avoids all the pain and suffering it possibly can, avoids it with a calculating selfishness. The world shrinks from nothing so much as from humiliation, and says “Assert yourself and your rights as much as you can.” Our Lord then describes the true blessedness, first of all negatively in the first three beatitudes by strong and marked contrasts to the character of the world: blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the mourners. Then He goes on to give its positive characteristics: its strong spiritual appetite for righteousness; its active and vigorous compassionateness; its single-mindedness or purity of heart; the deliberate aim it has to promote the kingdom of peace. Then, in the last beatitude, He answers the question how is such a character likely to find itself in such a world; and answers that question in terms very like those employed by a Jewish writer, possibly not very long before our Lord’s time, the writer of the Book of Wisdom, who describes the attitude of the world towards the righteous thus:

      “But let us lie in wait for the righteous man,

      Because he is of disservice to us

      And is contrary to our works,

      And upbraideth us with sins against the law,

      And layeth to our charge sins against our discipline.

      He professeth to have knowledge of God,

      And nameth himself servant of the Lord.

      He became to us a reproof of our thoughts.

      He is grievous unto us even to behold,

      Because his life is unlike other men’s,

      And his paths are of strange fashion.

      We were accounted of him as base metal,

      And he abstaineth from our ways as from uncleannesses.

      The latter end of the righteous he calleth happy;

      And he vaunteth that God is his father.

      Let us see if his words be true,

      And let us try what shall befall in the ending of his life.

      For if the righteous man is God’s son, he will uphold him,

      And he will deliver him out of the hand of his adversaries.

      With outrage and torture let us put him to the test,

      That we may learn his gentleness,

      And may prove his patience under wrong.

      Let us condemn him to a shameful death;

      For he shall be visited according to his words.

      Thus reasoned they, and they were led astray;

      For their wickedness blinded them,

      And they knew not the mysteries of God,

      Neither hoped they for wages of holiness,

      Nor did they judge that there is a prize for blameless souls.”13

      “Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

CHAPTER III

       THE BEATITUDES IN DETAIL

       Table of Contents

      I

       Table of Contents

      “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

      THE Old Testament is full of descriptions of the spirit of the world, the spirit of selfish wealth with its attendant cruelty: and by contrast to this are descriptions of the oppressed poor who are the friends of God. Our Lord took up all this language upon His own lips when, as St. Luke records, He turned to His disciples and said “Blessed are ye poor … woe unto you that are rich.” But all the actually poor are not the disciples of Christ. It is possible to combine the selfishness and grasping avarice of “the rich” with the condition of poverty. So our Lord has, as recorded by St. Matthew, gone beneath the surface and based His kingdom, the character of His citizens, not upon actual poverty, but upon detachment. The world says “Get all you can, and keep it.” Christ says, Blessed are those who at least in heart and will have nothing.

      There is one verse in the Old Testament which describes this poverty of spirit. It is the utterance of Job:14 “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” There is pure, perfect detachment. Job took and used aright what God gave him, adoring the sovereignty of God. The sovereign took away what He had given; Job gave it up freely. Being detached—that is poverty of spirit; at the least, “having food and covering, let us be therewith content.”15

      Our