'Blessed are the meek! for they shall inherit the earth,'--MATT, v.
5.
The originality of Christ's moral teaching lies not so much in the
novelty of His precepts as in the new relation in which He sets them,
the deepening which He gives them, the motives on which He bases them,
and the power which He communicates to keep them. Others before Him had
pronounced a benediction on the meek, but our Lord means far more than
they did, and, both in His description of the character and in the
promise which He attaches to it, He vindicates the uniqueness of His
notion of a perfect man.
The world's ideal is, on the whole, very different from His. It inclines
to the more conspicuous and so-called heroic virtues; it prefers a
great, flaring, yellow sunflower to the violet hiding among the grass,
and making its presence known only by fragrance. 'Blessed are the
strong, who can hold their own,' says the world. 'Blessed are the meek,'
says Christ.
The Psalmist had said it before Him, and had attached verbally the same
promise to the word. But our Lord means more than David did when he
said, 'The meek shall inherit the earth.' I ask you to think with me
now, first, what this Christian meekness is; then, whence it issues; and
then, whither it leads.