'And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain: and when He
was set, His disciples came unto Him: 2. And He opened his mouth,
and taught them, saying, 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4. Blessed are they that mourn:
for they shall be comforted. 5. Blessed are the meek: for they
shall inherit the earth. 6. Blessed are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. 7. Blessed
are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 8. Blessed are the
pure in heart: for they shall see God. 9. Blessed are the
peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God, 10.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11. Blessed are ye, when men shall
revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil
against you falsely, for My sake. 12. Rejoice, and be exceeding
glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they
the prophets which were before you. 13. Ye are the salt of the
earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be
salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and
to be trodden under foot of men. 14. Ye are the light of the world.
A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 15. Neither do men
light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick;
and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16. Let your
light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and
glorify your Father which is in heaven.'--MATT. v. 1-16.
An unnamed mountain somewhere on the Sea of Galilee is the Sinai of the
new covenant. The contrast between the savage desolation of the
wilderness and the smiling beauty of the sunny slope near the haunts of
men symbolises the contrast in the genius of the two codes, given from
each. There God came down in majesty, and the cloud hid Him from the
people's gaze; here Jesus sits amidst His followers, God with us. The
King proclaims the fundamental laws of His kingdom, and reveals much of
its nature by the fact that He begins by describing the characteristics
of its subjects, as well as by the fact that the description is cast in
the form of beatitudes.
We must leave unsettled the question as to the relation between the
Sermon on the Mount and the shorter edition of part of it given by Luke,
only pointing out that in this first part of Matthew's Gospel we are
evidently presented with general summaries; as, for example, the summary
of the Galilean ministry in the previous verses, and the grand
procession of miracles which follows in chapters viii. and ix. It is
therefore no violent supposition that here too the evangelist has
brought together, as specimens of our Lord's preaching, words which were
not all spoken at the same time. His description of the Galilean
ministry in ch. iv. 23, as 'teaching' and 'healing,' governs the
arrangement of his materials from chapter v. to the end of chapter ix.
First comes the sermon, then the miracles follow.
The Beatitudes, as a whole, are a set of paradoxes to the 'mind of the
flesh.' They were meant to tear away the foolish illusions of the
multitude as to the nature of the kingdom; and they must have disgusted
and turned back many would-be sharers in it. They are like a dash of
cold water on the fiery, impure enthusiasms which were eager for a
kingdom of gross delights and vulgar conquest. And, no doubt, Jesus
intended them to act like Gideon's test, and to sift out those whose
appetite for carnal good was uppermost. But they were tests simply
because they embodied everlasting truths as to the characters of His
subjects. Our narrow space allows of only the most superficial treatment
of these deep words.
I. The foundation of all is laid in poverty of spirit. The word rendered
'poor' does not only signify one in a condition of want, but rather one
who is aware of the condition, and seeks relief. If we may refer to
Latin words here, it is mendicus rather than _pauper_, a beggar rather
than a poor man, who is meant. So that to be poor in spirit is to be in
inmost reality conscious of need, of emptiness, of dependence on God, of
demerit; the true estimate of self, as blind, evil, weak, is intended;
the characteristic tone of feeling pointed to is self-abnegation, like
that of the publican smiting his breast, or that of the
disease-weakened, hunger-tortured prodigal, or that of the once
self-righteous Paul, 'O wretched man that I am!' People who do not like
evangelical teaching sometimes say, 'Give me the Sermon on the Mount.'
So say I. Only let us take all of it; and if we do, we shall come, as we
shall have frequent occasion to point out, in subsequent passages, to
something uncommonly like the evangelical theology to which it is
sometimes set up as antithetic. For Christ begins His portraiture of a
citizen of the kingdom with the consciousness of want and sin. All the
rest of the morality of the Sermon is founded on this. It is the root of
all that is heavenly and divine in character. So this teaching is dead
against the modern pagan doctrine of self-reliance, and really embodies
the very principle for the supposed omission of which some folk like
this Sermon; namely, that our proud self-confidence must be broken down
before God can do any good with us, or we can enter His kingdom.
The promises attached to the Beatitudes are in each case the results
which flow from the quality, rather than the rewards arbitrarily given
for it. So here, the possession of the kingdom comes by consequence from
poverty of spirit. Of course, such a kingdom as could be so inherited
was the opposite of that which the narrow and fleshly nationalism of the
Jews wanted, and these first words must have cooled many incipient
disciples. The 'kingdom of heaven' is the rule of God through Christ. It
is present wherever wills bow to Him; it is future, as to complete
realisation, in the heaven from which it comes, and to which, like its
King, it belongs even while on earth. Obviously, its subjects can only
be those who feel their dependence, and in poverty of spirit have cast
off self-will and self-reliance. 'Theirs is the kingdom' does not mean
'they shall rule,' but 'of them shall be its subjects.' True, they shall
rule in the perfected form of it; but the first, and in a real sense the
only, blessedness is to obey God; and that blessedness can only come
when we have learned poverty of spirit, because we see ourselves as in
need of all things.
II. Each Beatitude springs from the preceding, and all twined together
make an ornament of grace upon the neck, a chain of jewels. The second
sounds a more violent paradox than even the first. Sorrowing is blessed.
This, of course, cannot mean mere sorrow as such. That may or may not
be a blessing. Grief makes men worse quite as often as it makes them
better. Its waves often flow over us like the sea over marshes, leaving
them as salt and barren as it found them. Nor is sorrow always sure of
comfort. We must necessarily understand the word here so as to bring it
into harmony with the context, and link it with the former Beatitude as
flowing from it, as well as with the succeeding. The only intelligible
explanation is that this sorrow arises from the contemplation of the
same facts concerning self as lead to poverty of spirit, and is, in
fact, the emotional side of the same disposition. He who takes the true
measure of himself cannot but sorrow over the frightful gulf between
what he should and might be and what he is, for he knows that there is
more than misfortune or unavoidable creatural weakness at work. The grim
reality of sin has to be reckoned in. Personal responsibility and guilt
are facts. The soul that has once seen its own past as it is, and looked
steadily down into the depths of its own being, cannot choose but
'mourn.' Such contrition underlies all moral progress. The ethical
teaching of the Sermon on the Mount puts these two, poverty of spirit
and tears for sin, at the foundation. Do its admirers lay that fact to
heart? This is Christ's account of discipleship. We have to creep
through a narrow gate, which we shall not pass but on our knees and
leaving all our treasures outside. But once through, we are in a great
temple with far-reaching aisles and lofty roof. Such sorrow is sure of
comfort. Other sorrow is not. The comfort it needs is the assurance of
forgiveness and cleansing, and that assurance has never been sought from
the King in vain. The comfort is filtered to us in drops here; it pours
in a flood hereafter. Blessed the sorrow which leads to experience of
the tender touch of the hand that wipes away tears from the face, and
plucks evil from the heart! Blessed the mourning, which prepares for the
festal garland and the oil of gladness and the robe of praise, instead
of ashes on the head and sackcloth on the spirit!
III. Meekness here seems to be considered principally as exercised to
men, and it thus constitutes the first of the social virtues, which
henceforward alternate with those having exclusive reference to God. It
is the grace which opposes patient gentleness to hatred, injury, or
antagonism. The prominence given to it in Christ's teaching is one of
the peculiarities of Christian morals, and is a standing condemnation of
much so-called Christianity. Pride and anger and self-assertion and
retaliation flaunt in fine names, and are called manly virtues. Meekness
is smiled at, or trampled on, and the men who exercise it are called
'Quakers' and 'poor-spirited' and 'chicken-hearted' and the like. Social
life among us is in flagrant contradiction of this Beatitude; and as for
national life, all 'Christian nations' agree that to apply Christ's
precept to it would be absurd and suicidal. He said that the meek should
inherit the earth; statesmen say that the only way to keep a country is
to be armed to the teeth, and let no man insult its flag with impunity.
There does not seem much room for 'a spirited foreign policy' or for
'proper regard to one's own dignity' inside this Beatitude, does there?
But notice that this meekness naturally follows the preceding
dispositions. He who knows himself and has learned the depth of his own
evil will not be swift to blaze up at slights or wrongs. The true
meekness is not mere natural disposition, but the direct outcome of
poverty of spirit and the consequent sorrow. So, it is a test of their
reality. Many a man will indulge in confessions of sin, and crackle up
in sputtering heat of indignation at some slight or offence. If he
does, his lowly words have had little meaning, and the benediction of
these promises will come scantily to his heart.
Does Christ mean merely to say that meek men will acquire landed
properly? Is there not a present inheritance of the earth by them,
though they may not own a foot of it? They have the world who enjoy it,
whom it helps nearer God, who see Him in it, to whom it is the field for
service and the means for growing character. But in the future the
kingdom of heaven will be a kingdom of the earth, and the meek saints
shall reign with the King who is meek and lowly of heart.
IV. Righteousness is conformity to the will of God, or moral perfection.
Hunger and thirst are energetic metaphors for passionate desire, and
imply that righteousness is the true nourishment of the Spirit. Every
longing of a noble spirit is blessed. Aspiration after the unreached is
the salt of all lofty life. It is better to be conscious of want than to
be content. There are hungers which are all unblessed, greedy appetites
for the swine's husks, which are misery when unsatisfied, and disgust
when satiated. But we are meant to be righteous, and shall not in vain
desire to be so. God never sends mouths but He sends meat to fill them.
Such longings prophesy their fruition.
Notice that this hunger follows the experience of the former Beatitudes.
It is the issue of poverty of spirit and of that blessed sorrow.
Observe, too, that the desire after, and not the possession or
achievement of, righteousness is blessed. Is not this the first hint of
the Christian teaching that we do not work out or win but receive it?
God gives it. Our attitude towards that gift should be earnest longing.
Such a blessed hungerer shall 'receive ... righteousness from the God of
his salvation.' The certainty that he will do so rests at last on the
faithfulness of God, who cannot but respond to all desires which He
inspires. They are premonitions of His purposes, like rosy clouds that
run before the chariot of the sunrise. The desire to be righteous is
already righteousness in heart and will, and reveals the true bent of
the soul. Its realisation in life is a question of time. The progressive
fulfilment here points to completeness in heaven, when we shall behold
His face in righteousness, and be satisfied when we awake in His
likeness.
V. Again we have a grace which is exercised to men. Mercy is more than
meekness. That implied opposition, and was largely negative. This does
not regard the conduct of others at all, and is really love in exercise
to the needy, especially the unworthy. It embraces pity, charitable
forbearance, beneficence, and is revealed in acts, in words, in tears.
It is blessed in itself. A life of selfishness is hell; a life of mercy
is sweet with some savour of heaven. It is the consequence of mercy
received from God. Poverty of spirit, sorrow, hunger after righteousness
bring deep experiences of God's gentle forbearance and bestowing love,
and will make us like Him in proportion as they are real. Our
mercifulness, then, is a reflection from His. His ought to be the
measure and pattern of ours in depth, scope, extent of self-sacrifice,
and freeness of its gifts. A stringent requirement!
Our exercise of mercy is the condition of our receiving it. On the
whole, the world gives us back, as a mirror does, the reflection of our
own faces; and merciful men generally get what they give. But that is a
law with many exceptions, and Jesus means more than that. Merciful men
get mercy from God--not, of course, that we deserve mercy by being
merciful. That is a contradiction in terms; for mercy is precisely that
which we do not deserve. The place of mercy in this series shows that
Jesus regarded it as the consequence, not the cause, of our experience
of God's mercy. But He teaches over and over again that a hard,
unmerciful heart forfeits the divine mercy. It does so, because such a
disposition tends to obscure the very state of mind to which alone God's
mercy can be given. Such a man must have forgotten his poverty and
sorrow, his longings and their rich reward, and so must have, for the
time, passed from the place where he can take in God's gift. A life
inconsistent with Christian motives will rob a Christian of Christian
privileges. The hand on his brother's throat destroys the servant's own
forgiveness. He cannot be at once a rapacious creditor and a discharged
bankrupt.
VI. If detached from its connection, there is little blessedness in the
next Beatitude. What is the use of telling us how happy purity of heart
will make us? It only provokes the despairing question, 'And how am I to
be pure?' But when we set this word in its place here, it does bring
hope. For it teaches that purity is the result of all that has gone
before, and comes from that purifying which is the sure answer of God to
our poverty, mourning, and longing. Such purity is plainly progressive,
and as it increases, so does the vision of God grow. The more the
glasses of the telescope are cleansed, the brighter does the great star
shine to the gazer. 'No man hath seen God,' nor can see Him, either
amid the mists of earth or in the cloudless sky of heaven, if by seeing
we mean perceiving by sense, or full, direct comprehension by spirit.
But seeing Him is possible even now, if by it we understand the
knowledge of His character, the assurance of His presence, the sense of
communion with Him. Our earthly consciousness of God may become so
clear, direct, real, and certain, that it deserves the name of vision.
Such blessed intuition of Him is the prerogative of those whose hearts
Christ has cleansed, and whose inward eye is therefore able to behold
God, because it is like Him. 'Unless the eye were sunlike, how could it
see the sun?' We can blind ourselves to Him, by wallowing in filth.
Impurity unfits for seeing purity. Swedenborg profoundly said that the
wicked see only blackness where the sun is.
Like all these Beatitudes, this has a double fulfilment, as the kingdom
has two stages of here and hereafter. Purity of heart is the condition
of the vision of God in heaven. Without holiness, 'no man shall see the
Lord.' The sight makes us pure, and purity makes us see. Thus heaven
will be a state of ever-increasing, reciprocally acting sight and
holiness. Like Him because we see Him, we shall see Him more because we
have assimilated what we see, as the sunshine opens the petals, and
tints the flower with its own colours the more deeply, the wider it
opens.
VII. Once more we have the alternation of a grace exercised to men. If
we give due weight to the order of these Beatitudes, we shall feel that
Christ's peacemaker must be something more than a mere composer of men's
quarrels. For he has to be trained by all the preceding experiences, and
has to be emptied of self, penitent, hungering for and filled with
righteousness, and therefore pure in heart as well as, in regard to men,
meek and merciful, ere he can hope to fill this part. That
apprenticeship deepens the conception of the peace which Christ's
subjects are to diffuse. It is, first and chiefly, the peace which
enters the soul that has traversed all these stages; that is to say, the
Christian peacemaker is first to seek to bring about peace between men
and God, by beseeching them to be reconciled to Him, and then
afterwards, as a consequence of this, is to seek to diffuse through all
human relations the blessed unity and amity which flow most surely from
the common possession of the peace of God. Of course, the relation which
the subjects of the true King bear to all wars and fightings, to all
discord and strife, is not excluded, but is grounded on this deeper
meaning. The centuries that have passed since the words were spoken,
have not yet brought up the Christian conscience to the full perception
of their meaning and obligation. Too many of us still believe that
'great doors and effectual' can be blown open with gunpowder, and regard
this Beatitude as a counsel of perfection, rather than as one of the
fundamental laws of the kingdom.
The Christian who moves thus among men seeking to diffuse everywhere the
peace with God which fills his own soul, and the peace with all men
which they only who have the higher peace can preserve unbroken in their
quiet, meek hearts, will be more or less recognised as God-like by men,
and will have in his own heart the witness that he is called by God His
child. He will bear visibly the image of his Father, and will hear the
voice that speaks to him too as unto a son.
VIII. The last Beatitude crowns all the paradoxes of the series with
what sounds to flesh as a stark contradiction. The persecuted are
blessed. The previous seven sayings have perfected the portraiture of
what a child of the kingdom is to be. This appends a calm prophecy,
which must have shattered many a rosy dream among the listeners, of what
his reception by the world will certainly turn out. Jesus is not
summoning men to dominion, honour, and victory; but to scorn and
suffering. His own crown, He knew, was first to be twisted of thorns,
and copies of it were to wound His followers' brows. Yet even that fate
was blessed; for to suffer for righteousness, which is to suffer for
Him, brings elevation of spirit, a solemn joy, secret supplies of
strength, and sweet intimacies of communion else unknown. The noble army
of martyrs rose before His thoughts as He spoke; and now, eighteen
hundred years after, heaven is crowded with those who by axe and stake
and gibbet have entered there. 'The glory dies not, and the grief is
past.' They stoop from their thrones to witness to us that Christ is
true, and that the light affliction has wrought an eternal weight of
glory.