“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
Still our Lord is explaining the character of the kingdom by contrast to the ideals of the world. The world says “Stand up for your rights; make the most of yourself; don’t let any man put upon you.” And so we are always standing on our dignity, always thinking ourselves insulted or imposed upon. “Blessed are the meek,” our Lord says. The meek—that is manifestly, those who are ready to be put upon as far as they themselves are concerned. This is the character of our Lord, who, “when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.”25
Of course, from another point of view, we may be quite bound from time to time to assert ourselves. Our Lord recognizes that, as we shall have an opportunity of noticing in another connexion. We may have to assert ourselves for the sake of the moral order of the church and of the world. But no one gets true peace, or has really got to the foundation of things, until, as far as his own dignity is concerned, he is in a position to say, You can wrong God and you can wrong society; and it may be my duty to stand up for God and for society; but me, as far as I am concerned, you cannot provoke. That is the ideal to which we have to attain. That is the meekness which is appropriate to sinners like ourselves who know what we deserve, who on a general review of life can seldom feel that we are suffering unmerited wrong; but it is the meekness also of the sinless and righteous one.
And the result of this entire absence of self-assertion is that we can make no claim on the world which God will not at the last substantiate. “Blessed are the meek”—our Lord is here quoting the psalm—“for they shall inherit the earth.”26 What is an heir? An heir is a person who enters into rightful possession. He is in no fear that any other can ever come and turn him out. He moves at ease amongst his possessions, because the things that he inherits are really his. No one with a better claim can come to oust him. Now, if we go about the world making claims on society which God does not authorize, refusing to bear what God will have us bear, the day will come when the true Master appears, and we shall be exposed to shame. We have made claims which He did not authorize; we have asserted ourselves where He gave us no right or title to assert ourselves; we shall be ousted. But the meek, who ever committed themselves to Him that judgeth righteously, have nothing to fear. “Friend, come up higher,” is all that is before them. They will simply, in steady and royal advance, enter into the full heritage of that which men kept back from them, but God has in store for them.
IV
“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
In strong, bold outlines our Lord has begun by sketching for us the character of His citizens in marked contrast to the ideals of the world. But He is not satisfied with giving us these, as it were, negative characteristics; He passes on to more positive traits. The citizens of the new kingdom “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Every one knows what appetite is, what hunger and thirst mean. It is a strong craving, a craving which must be satisfied, or we perish. You cannot forget that you are hungry or thirsty. And in human pursuits we again and again see what is like hunger and thirst. You see an appetite for place; a man is bent upon it; he will by whatever means get that position which his soul desires. So again you see in men’s amusements a similar craving. Go to the side of the Thames at Putney, and you may see two crews of eight men practising there for a famous race, their supporters and backers looking on. All is eagerness, and there is not the slightest betrayal of consciousness that anything in the world could be more important than the winning of that race. That is what may be truly called a hunger and thirst. And such is the appetite for righteousness which possesses the citizens of our Lord’s kingdom. Righteousness, or rather the righteousness, that character which God has marked out for us, the character of Christ—blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after it.
Brethren, we so often feel hopeless about getting over our faults. Let us hunger and thirst after righteousness, and we shall be filled. As our Lord saw of the travail of His soul and was satisfied, so, depend upon it, shall we. If you only seriously want to be good, your progress may be slow, but at the last you will be good. Christ is pledged to satisfy, if only you will go on wanting. There is not in the pursuit of goodness any failure except in ceasing to hunger and thirst—that is, in ceasing to want, to pray, to try. Do you want righteousness seriously, deliberately? Then you can have it, and not for yourself only, but for the world. “Till righteousness turn again unto judgement, all such as are true in heart shall follow it.” It is pledged to us. The day will come when the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of righteousness and meekness and truth, shall be an established and a visible fact. Blessed are they that here and now hunger and thirst after righteousness in themselves and in the world: for they shall be filled.
V
“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.”
Of course wherever human misery is, there is also human pity. But, apart from Christ, it was not thought of as a motive force, to be used in redeeming others’ lives and in enriching our own. The Buddha, indeed, one of the purest and noblest men who have ever lived, was first awakened from the dream of luxury, in which he had been brought up, by the threefold spectacle of human misery—decrepitude, disease and death. And once awakened, he made his “great renunciation”: he abandoned his royal state: after much searching, he discovered for himself, as he thought, the way of emancipation from life and, being filled with compassion, taught it to others. But he believed life to be radically an evil. He could imagine no redemption of life but only escape from it. The philosopher Aristotle, who examined and catalogued human qualities, could not have failed to come across the fact of pity. But he seems even to have regarded it as a troublesome emotion—a disturbing force which had better be got rid of in practical concerns. The Greek tragedy, which by its marvellous presentations of the weakness of man was calculated to evoke the sentiment of pity in great intensity, he regarded as a vent or outlet for the emotion which in this way could be purged off and leave the Greek citizen in untroubled serenity in face of actual life. It is to be feared that we very often use the drama and literature in this way. We let our emotion of pity be stirred by the pictures of human misfortune presented to us, and we find a luxury in the indulgence of the emotion. But it is a luxury, and nothing more. It leads to no effective action for the removing of the misery which we deplore. This is pagan. For the disciple of Christ pity is a motive to vigorous action. God in Christ declares His “power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity.” Powerful pity is pity which passes from emotion into practical and redemptive action. Of such pity only does Christ say “Blessed are the merciful or pitiful.” Compassion which does nothing is in the New Testament27 regarded as a form of pernicious hypocrisy.
And the merciful shall obtain mercy. Here we get a great law of the divine dealing. God deals with us as we deal with our fellow-men. In the Old Testament28 it is said “With the merciful thou, God, wilt show thyself merciful; with the perfect man thou wilt show thyself perfect; with the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; and with the perverse thou wilt show thyself froward.” And again, in our Lord’s parable,29 when the servant who had been let off his debts by his master was found to deal unmercifully with his fellow-servant who was indebted to him, the remission was cancelled, and the weight of his old debt fell back upon him, to teach us that God deals with us as we deal with our fellow-men. Thus again, in view of the last great day, our Lord says “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, come ye blessed, inherit the kingdom.” So in our Lord’s Prayer, we pray “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.” Do we want to know how our Lord will regard us at the last day? We can find the answer by considering how our face looks, not in mere passing emotion,