find in them a more detailed account of the blessed life. The end of each beatitude tells us what our Lord our Lord meant by blessedness. 'Theirs is the kingdom of heaven; they shall be comforted; they shall inherit the earth; they shall be filled; they shall obtain mercy; they shall see God; they shall be called sons of God.' All the last six of these seven expressions may be said simply to expand the first. They amplify the idea of membership in the kingdom of heaven. Membership in the kingdom is a life of perfect relationship with man and nature based on perfect fellowship with God. That is true blessedness, and that is open to all. Therein is consolation after all troubles; there is the freedom to move about with a sense of heirship in God's world, as in our legitimate heritage and with no fear of being turned out; there is the satisfaction of all legitimate aspiration; there is gracious acceptance at all hands; there is the vision of all truth and beauty and goodness, in God; there is final and full recognition. That is true blessedness. That is the life which our Lord promises to every one who will simply put himself in the right relation to God.

3. There is only one more point that we need notice with regard to these beatitudes as a whole,

and it concerns their order. Our Lord begins with strong paradoxes: Blessed are the poorthe mourners-the meek. That is to say in other words, He first describes the true character by its contrast to the character of the world. We frequently have occasion to use the expression 'the world.' Let me, therefore, once for all explain what I understand by it when it is used in a bad sense. It means, of course, not God's creation as such, which was pronounced very good. When 'the world' is spoken of in a bad sense-the worldly world—you may define it in this way: it is human society organizing itself apart from God. That is what in the Bible is meant by 'the world.' Well, the world notoriously clutches at all the gold it can get. The world avoids all the pain and suffering it possibly can, avoids it with a calculating selfishness. The world shrinks from nothing so much as from humiliation, and says 'Assert yourself and your rights as much as you can.' Our Lord then describes the true blessedness, first of all negatively in the first three beatitudes by strong and marked contrasts to the character of the world: blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the mourners. Then He goes on to give its positive characteristics:

its strong spiritual appetite for righteousness; its active and vigorous compassionateness; its single-mindedness or purity of heart; the deliberate aim it has to promote the kingdom of peace. Then, in the last beatitude, He answers the question how is such a character likely to find itself in such a world; and answers that question in terms very like those employed by a Jewish writer, possibly not very long before our Lord's time, the writer of the Book of Wisdom, who describes the attitude of the world towards the righteous thus:

'But let us lie in wait for the righteous man, Because he is of disservice to us,

And is contrary to our works,

And upbraideth us with sins against the law,

And layeth to our charge sins against our discipline.
He professeth to have knowledge of God,

And nameth himself servant of the Lord.
He became to us a reproof of our thoughts.
He is grievous unto us even to behold,
Because his life is unlike other men's,
And his paths are of strange fashion.

We were accounted of him as base metal,

And he abstaineth from our ways as from uncleannesses. The latter end of the righteous he calleth happy;

And he vaunteth that God is his father.

Let us see if his words be true,

And let us try what shall befall in the ending of his life.

For if the righteous man is God's son, he will uphold

him,

And he will deliver him out of the hand of his adversaries.
With outrage and torture let us put him to the test,
That we may learn his gentleness,

And may prove his patience under wrong.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death;
For he shall be visited according to his words.

Thus reasoned they, and they were led astray;
For their wickedness blinded them,

And they knew not the mysteries of God,
Neither hoped they for wages of holiness,

Nor did they judge that there is a prize for blameless souls

'Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad : for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.'

1 Wisdom ii. 12 ff.

CHAPTER III

6

THE BEATITUDES IN DETAIL

i.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'

THE Old Testament is full of descriptions of the spirit of the world, the spirit of selfish wealth with its attendant cruelty: and by contrast to this are descriptions of the oppressed poor who are the friends of God. Our Lord took up all this language upon His own lips when, as St. Luke records, He turned to His disciples and said 'Blessed are ye poor... woe unto you that are rich.' But all the actually poor are not the disciples of Christ. It is possible to combine the selfishness and grasping avarice of 'the rich' with the condition of poverty. So our Lord has, as recorded by St. Matthew, gone beneath the surface and based His kingdom, the character of His citizens, not upon actual