Now it is to be noticed that Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount,
which is much briefer than Matthew's, omits the words 'in spirit,' and
so seems at first sight to be an encomium and benediction upon the
outward condition of earthly poverty. Matthew, on the other hand, says
'poor in spirit.' And the difference between the two evangelists has
given occasion to some to maintain that one or the other of them
misunderstood Christ's meaning, and modified His expression either by
omission or enlargement. But if you will notice another difference
between the two forms of the saying in the two Gospels, you will, I
think, find an explanation of the one already referred to; for Matthew's
Beatitudes are general statements, 'Blessed are'; and Luke's are
addressed to the circle of the disciples, 'Blessed are ye.' And if we
duly consider that difference, we shall see that the general statement
necessarily required the explanation which Matthew's version appends to
it, in order to prevent the misunderstanding that our Lord was setting
so much store by earthly conditions as to suppose that virtue and
blessedness were uniformly attached to any of these. Jesus Christ was no
vulgar demagogue flattering the poor and inveighing against the rich.
Luke's 'ye poor' shows at once that Christ was not speaking about all
the poor in outward condition, but about a certain class of such. No
doubt the bulk of His disciples were poor men who had been drawn or
driven by their sense of need to open their hearts to Him. Outward
poverty is a blessing if it drives men to God; it is not a blessing if,
as is often the case, it drives men from Him; or if, as is still oftener
the case, it leaves men negligent of Him. So that Matthew's enlargement
is identical in meaning with Luke's condensed form, regard being had to
the difference in the structure of the two Beatitudes.
And so we come just to this question--What is this poverty of spirit? I
do not need to waste your time in saying what it is not. To me it seems
to be a lowly and just estimate of ourselves, our character, our
achievements, based upon a clear recognition of our own necessities,
weaknesses, and sins.
The 'poor in spirit.'--I wonder if it would be very reasonable for a
moth that flits about the light, or a gnat that dances its hour in the
sunbeam, to be proud because it had longer wings, or prettier markings
on them, than some of its fellows? Is it much more reasonable for us to
plume ourselves on, and set much store by, anything that we are or have
done? Two or three plain questions, to which the answers are quite as
plain, ought to rip up this swollen bladder of self-esteem which we are
all apt to blow. 'What hast thou that thou hast not received?' Where did
you get it? How came you by it? How long is it going to last? Is it such
a very big thing after all? You have written a book; you are clever as
an operator, an experimenter; you are a successful student. You have
made a pile of money; you have been prosperous in your earthly career,
and can afford to look upon men that are failures and beneath you in
social position with a smile of pity or of contempt, as the case may be.
Well! I suppose the distance to the nearest fixed star is pretty much
the same from the top of one ant-hill in a wood as from the top of the
next one, though the one may be a foot higher than the other. I suppose
that we have all come out of nothing, and are anything, simply because
God is everything. If He were to withhold His upholding and inbreathing
power from any of us for one moment, we should shrivel into nothingness
like a piece of paper calcined in the fire, and go back into that
vacuity out of which His fiat, and His fiat alone, called us. And yet
here we are, setting great store, some of us, by our qualities or
belongings, and thinking ever so much of ourselves because we possess
them, and all the while we are but great emptinesses; and the things of
which we are so proud are what God has poured into us.
You think that is all commonplace. Bring it into your lives, brethren;
apply it to your estimate of yourselves, and your expectations from
other people, and you will be delivered from a large part of the
annoyances and the miseries of your present.
But the deepest reason for a habitual and fixed lowly opinion of
ourselves lies in a sadder fact. We are not only recipient
nothingnesses; we have something that is our own, and that is our will,
and we have lifted it up against God. And if a man's position as a
dependent creature should take all lofty looks and high spirit out of
him, his condition as a sinful man before God should lay him flat on his
face in the presence of that Majesty; and should make him put his hand
on his lips and say, from behind the covering, 'Unclean! unclean!' Oh,
brethren, if we would only go down into the depths of our own hearts,
every one of us would find there more than enough to make all
self-complacency and self-conceit utterly impossible, as it ought to be,
for us for ever. I have no wish, and God knows I have no need, to
exaggerate about this matter; but we all know that if we were turned
inside out, and every foul, creeping thing, and every blotch and spot
upon these hearts of ours spread in the light, we could not face one
another; we could scarcely face ourselves. If you or I were set, as they
used to set criminals, up in a pillory with a board hanging round our
necks, telling all the world what we were, and what we had done, there
would be no need for rotten eggs to be flung at us; we should abhor
ourselves. You know that is so. I know that it is so about myself, 'and
heart answereth to heart as in a glass.' And are we the people to perk
ourselves up amongst our fellows, and say, 'I am rich and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing'? Do we not know that we are poor and
miserable and blind and naked? Oh, brethren, the proud old saying of the
Greeks, 'Know thyself,' if it were followed out unflinchingly and
honestly by the purest saint this side heaven, would result in this
profound abnegation of all claims, in this poverty of spirit.
So little has the world been influenced by Christ's teaching that it
uses 'poor-spirited creature' as a term of opprobrium and depreciation.
It ought to be the very opposite; for only the man who has been down
into the dungeons of his own character, and has cried unto God out of
the depths, will be able to make the house of his soul a fabric which
may be a temple of God, and with its shining apex may pierce the clouds
and seem almost to touch the heavens. A great poet has told us that the
things which lead life to sovereign power are self-knowledge,
self-reverence, and self-control. And in a noble sense it is true, but
the deepest self-knowledge will lead to self-abhorrence rather than to
self-reverence; and self-control is only possible when, knowing our own
inability to cope with our own evil, we cast ourselves on that Lamb of
God who beareth away the sin of the world, and ask Him to guide and to
keep us. The right attitude for us is, 'He did not so much as lift up
his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful
to me a sinner.' And then, sweeter than angels' voices fluttering down
amid the blue, there will come that gracious word, 'Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.'