'Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.'--MATT. v.
7.
THE divine simplicity of the Beatitudes covers a divine depth, both in
regard to the single precepts and to the sequence of the whole. I have
already pointed out that the first of the series Is to be regarded as
the root and germ of all the subsequent ones. If for a moment we set it
aside and consider only the fruits which are successively developed from
it, we shall see that the remaining members of the sequence are arranged
in pairs, of which each contains, first, a characteristic more inward
and relating to the deep things of individual religion; and, second, a
characteristic which has its field of action in our relations to men.
For example, the 'mourners' and the 'meek' are paired. Those who 'hunger
and thirst after righteousness' and the 'merciful' are paired. 'The pure
in heart' and 'the peacemakers' are paired.
Now that sequence can scarcely be accidental. It is the application in
detail of the great principle which our Lord endorsed in its Old
Testament form when He said that the first great commandment, the love
of God, had a companion consequent on and like unto it, the love of our
neighbour. Religion without beneficence, and beneficence without
religion, are equally maimed. The one is a root without fruit, and the
other a fruit without a root. The selectest emotions, the lowliest
faith, the loftiest aspirations, the deepest consciousness of one's own
unworthiness--these priceless elements of personal religion--are of
little worth unless there are inseparably linked with them meekness,
mercifulness, and peacemaking. 'What God hath joined together, let not
man put asunder.' If any Christian people have neglected the service of
man for the worship of God, they are flying in the face of Christ's
teaching. If any antagonists of Christianity attack it on the ground
that it fosters such neglect, they mistake the system that they
criticise, and are judging it by the imperfect practice of the disciples
instead of by the perfect precepts of the Master.
So, then, here we have a characteristic lodged in the very heart of this
series of Beatitudes which refers wholly to our demeanour to one
another. My remarks now will, therefore, be of a very homely,
commonplace, and practical kind.
I. Note the characteristic on which our Lord here pours out His
blessing--Mercy.
Now, like all the other members of this sequence, with the exception,
perhaps, of the last, this quality refers to disposition much rather
than to action. Conduct is included, of course; but conduct only
secondarily. Jesus Christ always puts conduct second, as all wise and
great teachers do. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.' That is
the keynote of all noble morality. And none has ever carried it out more
thoroughly than has the morality of the Gospel. It is a poor translation
and limitation of this great word which puts in the foreground merely
merciful actions. The mercifulness of my text is, first and foremost, a
certain habitual way of looking at and feeling towards men, especially
to men in suffering and need, and most especially to men who have proved
themselves bad and blameworthy. It is implied that a rigid retribution
would lead to severer methods of judgment and of action.
Therefore the first characteristic of the merciful man is that he is
merciful in his judgments; not making the worst of people, no Devil's
Advocate in his estimates of his fellows; but, endlessly, and, as the
world calls it, foolishly and incredibly, gentle in his censures, and
ever ready to take the charitable--which is generally the
truer--construction of acts and motives. That is a very threadbare
thought, brother, but the way to invest commonplace with startling power
is to bring it into immediate connection with our own life and conduct.
And if you will try to walk by this threadbare commonplace for a week,
I am mistaken if you do not find out that it has teeth to bite and a
firm grip to lay upon you. Threadbare truth is not effete until it is
obeyed, and when we try to obey it, it ceases to be commonplace.
Again, I may remind you that this mercifulness, which is primarily an
inward emotion, and a way, as I said, of thinking of, and of looking at,
unworthy people, must necessarily, of course, find its manifestation in
our outward conduct. And there will be, what I need not dilate upon, a
readiness to help, to give, to forgive not only offences against society
and morality, but offences against ourselves.
I need not dwell longer upon this first part of my subject. I wished
mainly to emphasise that to begin with action, in our understanding of
mercifulness, is a mistake; and that we must clear our hearts of
antipathies, and antagonisms, and cynical suspicions, if we would
inherit the blessings of our text.
Before I go further, I would point out the connection between this
incumbent duty of mercifulness and the preceding virtue of meekness. It
is hard enough to bear 'the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy
takes,' without one spot of red in the cheek, one perturbation or flush
of anger in the heart; and to do that might task us all to the utmost.
But that is not all that Christ's ethics require of us. It is not
sufficient to exercise the passive virtue of meekness; there must be the
active one of mercifulness. And to call for that is to lay an additional
weight upon our consciences, and to strain and stretch still further the
obligation under which we come. We have not done what the worst men and
our most malicious enemies have a right to receive from us when we say,
with the cowardly insincerity of the world, 'I can forgive but I cannot
forget.' That is no forgiveness, and that is no mercifulness It is not
enough to stand still, unresisting. There must be a hand of helpfulness
stretched out, and a gush of pity and mercifulness in the heart, if we
are to do what our Master has done for us all, and what our Master
requires us to do for one another. Mercifulness is the active side of
the passive meekness.
Further, in a word, I would note here another thing, and that is--what a
sad, stern, true view of the condition of men in the world results from
noticing that the only three qualities in regard to our relation to them
which Christ sets in this sevenfold tiara of diamonds are meekness in
the face of hatred and injustice; mercifulness in the face of weakness
and wickedness; peacemaking in the face of hostility and wrangling. What
a world in which we have to live, where the crowning graces are those
which presuppose such vices as do these! Ah! dear friends, 'as sheep in
the midst of wolves' is true to-day. And the one conquering power is
patient gentleness, which recompenses all evil with good, and is the
sole means of transforming and thus overcoming it.
People talk a great deal, and a good deal of it very insincerely, about
their admiration for these precepts gathered together in this chapter.
If they would try to live them for a fortnight, they would perhaps pause
a little longer than some of them do before they said, as do people that
detest the theology of the New Testament, 'The Sermon on the Mount is
_my_ religion.' Is it? It does not look very like it. At all events, if
it is, it is a religion behind which practice most wofully limps.
II. Let me ask you to look at what I have already in part referred
to--the place in this series which Mercifulness holds.
Now, of course, I know, and nothing that I say now is to be taken for a
moment as questioning or underestimating it, that, altogether apart from
religion, there is interwoven into the structure of human nature that
sentiment of mercifulness which our Lord here crowns with His
benediction. But it is not that natural, instinctive sentiment--which is
partially unreliable, and has little power apart from the reinforcement
of higher thoughts to carry itself consistently through life--that our
Lord is here speaking about; but it is a mercifulness which is more than
an instinct, more than a sentiment, more than the natural answer of the
human heart to the sight of compassion and distress, which is, in fact,
the product of all that has preceded it in this linked chain of
characteristics and their blessings.
And so I ask you to recall these. 'Poor in spirit,' 'mourning,' 'meek,'
'hungering and thirsting after righteousness'--these are the springs
that feed the flow of this river; and if it be not fed from them, but
from the surface-waters of human sentiment and instinct, it will dry up
long before it has availed to refresh barren places, and to cool thirsty
lips. And note also the preceding promises, 'theirs is the kingdom of
heaven'; 'they shall be comforted'; 'they shall inherit the earth; 'they
shall be filled.' These are experiences which, again, are another
collection of the head-waters of this stream.
That is to say, the true, lasting, reliable, conquering mercifulness has
a double source. The consciousness of our own weakness, the sadness that
creeps over the heart when it makes the discovery of its own sin, the
bowed submission primarily to the will of God, and secondarily to the
antagonisms which, in subservience to that will, we may meet in life,
and the yearning desire for a fuller righteousness and a more lustrous
purity in our own lives and characters--these are the experiences which
will make a man gentle in his judgment of his brother, and full of
melting charity in all his dealings with him. If I know how dark my own
nature is, how prone to uncommitted evils, how little I have to thank
myself for the virtues that I have practised, which are largely due to
my exemption from temptation and to my opportunities, and how little I
have in my own self that I can venture to bring to the stern judgment
which I am tempted to apply to other people, then the words of censure
will falter on my tongue, and the bitter construction of my brother's
conduct and character will be muffled in silence. 'Except as to open
outbreakings,' said one of the very saintliest of men, 'I want nothing
of what Judas and Cain had.' If we feel this, we shall ask ourselves,
'Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?' and the condemnation
of others will stick in our throats when we try to utter it.
And, on the other hand, if I, through these paths of self-knowledge, and
lowly estimate of self, and penitent confession of sin, and flexibility
of will to God, and yearning, as for my highest food and good, after a
righteousness which I feel I do not possess, have come into the position
in which my poverty is, by His gift, made rich, and the tears are wiped
away from off my face by His gracious hand, and a full possession of
large blessings bestowed on my humble will, and the righteousness for
which I long imparted to me, shall I not have learned how divine a thing
it is to give to the unworthy, and so be impelled to communicate what I
have already received? 'Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved
children; and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us.' They only are
deeply, through and through, universally and always merciful who have
received mercy. The light is reflected at the same angle as it falls,
and the only way by which there can come from our faces and lives a
glory that shall lighten many dark hearts, and make sunshine in many a
shady place, is that these hearts shall have turned full to the very
fountain itself of heavenly radiance, and so 'have received of the Lord
that which also' they 'deliver' unto men.
And so, brethren, there are two plain, practical exhortations from these
thoughts. One is, let us Christian people learn the fruits of God's
mercy, and be sure of this, that our own mercifulness in regard to men
is an accurate measure of the amount of the divine mercy which we have
received. The other is, let all of us learn the root of man's mercy to
men. There is plenty, of a sort, of philanthropy and beneficent and
benevolent work and feeling to-day, entirely apart from all perception
of, and all faith in, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in so far as the
individuals who exercise that beneficence are concerned. I, for my part,
am narrow enough to believe that the streams of non-Christian
charitableness, which run in our land and in other lands to-day, have
been fed from Christ's fountain, though the supply has come underground,
and bursts into light apparently unconnected with its source. If there
had been no New Testament there would have been very little of the
beneficence which flouts the New Testament to-day. Historically, it is
the great truths, which we conveniently summarise as being evangelical
Christianity, that have been mother to the new charity that, since
Christ, has been breathed over the world. I, for my part, believe that
if you strike out the doctrine of universal sinfulness, if you cover
over the Cross of Christ, if you do not find in it the manifestation of
a God who is endlessly merciful to the most unworthy, you have destroyed
the basis on which true and operative benevolence will rest. So then,
dear brethren, let us all seek to get a humbler and a truer conception
of what we ourselves are, and a loftier and truer faith of what God in
Christ is; and then to remember that if we have these, we are bound to,
and we shall, show that we have them, by making that which is the anchor
of our hope the pattern of our lives.