Now there are certain people whose natural disposition has in it a fine
element, which diffuses soothing and concord all around them. I dare say
we all have known such--perhaps some good woman, without any very
shining gifts of intellect, who yet dwelt in such peace of heart herself
that conflict and jangling were rebuked in her presence. And there are
other people who love peace, and seek after it in the cowardly fashion
of letting things alone; whose 'peacemaking' has no nobler source than
hatred of trouble, and a wish to let sleeping dogs lie. These, instead
of being peacemakers, are war-makers, for they are laying up materials
for a tremendous explosion some day.
But it is a very different temper that Jesus Christ has in view here,
and I need only ask you to do again what we have had occasion to do in
the previous sermons of this series--to link this characteristic with
those that go before it, of which it is regarded as being the bright and
consummate flower and final outcome. No man can bring to others that
which he does not possess. Vainly will he whose own heart is torn by
contending passions, whose own life is full of animosities and
unreconciled outstanding causes of alienation and divergence between him
and God, between him and duty, between him and himself, ever seek to
shed any deep or real peace amongst men. He may superficially solder
some external quarrels, but that is not all that Jesus Christ means. His
peacemakers are created by having passed through all the previous
experiences which the preceding verses bring out. They have learned the
poverty of their own spirits. They have wept tears, if not real and
literal, yet those which are far more agonising--tears of spirit and
conscience--when they have thought of their own demerits and foulnesses.
They have bowed in humble submission to the will of God, and even to
that will as expressed by the antagonisms of man. They have yearned
after the possession of a fuller and nobler righteousness than they have
attained. They have learned to judge others with a gentle judgment
because they know how much they themselves need it, and to extend to
others a helping hand because they are aware of their own impotence and
need of succour. They have been led through all these, often painful,
experiences into a purity of heart which has been blessed by some
measure of vision of God; and, having thus been equipped and prepared,
they are fit to go out into the world and say, in the presence of all
its tempests, 'Peace! be still.' Something of the miracle-working energy
of the Master whom they serve will be shed upon those who serve Him.
Brethren, the peacemaker who is worthy of the name must have gone
through these deep spiritual experiences. I do not say that they are to
come in regular stages, separable from each other. That is not the way
in which a character mounts towards God. It does so not by a flight of
steps, at distinctly different elevations, but rather by an ascending
slope. And, although these various Christian graces which precede that
of my text are separable in thought, and are linked in the fashion that
our Lord sets forth in experience, they may be, and often are,
contemporaneous.
But whether separated from one another in time or not, whether this
life-preparation, of which the previous verses give us the outline, has
been realised drop by drop, or whether it has been all flooded on to the
soul at once, as it quite possibly has, in some fashion or other it must
precede our being the sort of peacemakers that Christ desires and
blesses.
There is only one more point that I would make here before I go on, and
that is, that it is well to notice that the climax of Christian
character, according to Jesus Christ Himself, is found in our relations
to men, and not in our relation to God. Worship of heart and spirit,
devout emotions of the sacredest, sweetest, most hallowed and hallowing
sort, are absolutely indispensable, as I have tried to show you. But
equally, if not more, important is it for us to remember that the purest
communion with God, and the selectest emotional experiences of the
Christian life, are meant to be the bases of active service; and that,
if such service does not follow these, there is good reason for
supposing that these are spurious, and worth very little. The service of
man is the outcome of the love of God. He who begins with poverty of
spirit is perfected when, forgetting himself, and coming down from the
mountain-top, where the Shekinah cloud of the Glory and the audible
voice are, he plunges into the struggles of the multitude below, and
frees the devil-ridden boy from the demon that possesses him. Begin by
all means with poverty of spirit, or you will never get to
this--'Blessed are the peacemakers.' But see to it that poverty of
spirit leads to the meekness, the mercifulness, the peace-bringing
influence which Christ has pronounced blessed.