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MT 5:6
FOURTH BEATITUDE
Alexander Maclaren |
TWO
preliminary remarks will give us the point of view from which I desire
to consider these words now. First, we have seen, in previous sermons,
that these paradoxes of the Christian life which we call the Beatitudes
are a linked chain, or, rather, an outgrowth from a common root. Each
presupposes all the preceding. Now, of course, it is a mistake to expect
uniformity in the process of building up character, and stages which are
separable and successive in thought may be simultaneous and coalesce in
fact. But none the less is our Lord here outlining successive stages in
the growth of a true Christian life. I shall have more to say about the
place in the series which this Beatitude holds, but for the present I
simply ask you to remember that it has a background and set of previous
experiences, out of which it springs, and that we shall not understand
the depth of Christ’s meaning if we isolate it from these and regard it
as standing alone.
Then, another consideration is the remarkable divergence in this
Beatitude from the others. The ‘meek,’ the ‘merciful,’ the ‘pure in
heart,’ the ‘peacemakers,’ have all attained to certain characteristics.
But this is not a benediction pronounced upon those who have attained to
righteousness, but upon those who long after it. Desire, which has
reached such a pitch as to be comparable to the physical craving of a
hungry man for food or to the imperious thirst of parched throats, seems
a strange kind of blessedness; but it is better to long for a higher —
though it be unattained — good than to be content with a lower which is
possessed. Better to climb, though the summit be far and the path be
steep, than to browse amongst the herds in the fat valleys. Aspiration
is blessedness when it is worthily directed. Let us, then, look at these
two points of this Beatitude; this divine hunger of the soul, and its
satisfaction which is sure.
I. Note, then, the hunger which is blessed.
Now ‘righteousness’ has come to be a kind of theological term which
people use without attaching any very distinct meaning to it. And it
would be little improvement to substitute for ‘righteousness’ the
abstraction of moral conformity to the will of God. Suppose we try to
turn the words of my text into modern English, and instead of saying,
‘Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness,’ say,
Blessed are the men and women that long more than for anything else to
be good. Does not that sound a little more near our daily lives than the
well-worn and threadbare word of my text? Righteousness is neither more
nor less than in spirit a will submitted to God, and in conduct the
practice of whatsoever things are noble and lovely and of good report.
The production of such a character, the aiming after the perfection of
spirit and of conduct, is the highest aim that a man can set before him.
There are plenty of other hungers of the soul that are legitimate. There
are many of them that are bracing and ennobling and elevating. It is
impossible not to hunger for the supply of physical necessities. It is
good to long for love, for wisdom. It is better to long most to be good
men and women. For what are we here for? To enjoy? To work? To know? Yes
I But it is not conduct, and it is still less thought, and it is least
of all enjoyment, in any of its forms, which is the purpose of life, and
ought to be our aim here upon earth. We are here to learn to be; and the
cultivation and production of characters that lie parallel with the will
of God is the Omega of all our life in the flesh. All these other
things, even the highest of them, the yearning desire
‘To follow knowledge, like a
sinking star,
Beyond the furthest bounds of human thought,’
ought to be subordinate to this
further purpose of being good men and women. All these are scaffolding;
the building is a character conformed to God’s will and assimilated to
Christ’s likeness.
That commends itself as a statement of man’s chief end to all reasonable
and thoughtful men in their deepest and truest moments. And so, whilst
we must let our desires go out on the lower levels, and seek to draw to
ourselves the various gifts that are necessary for the various phases
and sides of our being, here is one that a man’s own conscience tells
him should stand clearly supreme and dominant — the hunger and thirst
after righteousness.
Still further, notice how this desire, on which our Lord pronounces His
benediction, comes in a series. I know that all men have latent, and
sometimes partially and fragmentarily operative in their lives and
manifest on the surface, sporadic desires after goodness. The existence
of these draws the line between man and devil. And there is no soul on
earth which has not sometimes felt the longing to be better than it is,
to its own consciousness, to-day. But the yearning which our Lord
blesses comes after, and is the result of, the previous characteristics
which He has described. There must be the poverty of spirit which
recognises our own insufficiency and unworthiness; or, to put it into
simpler words, we must know ourselves to be sinners. There must be the
mourning which follows upon that revelation of ourselves; the penitence
which does not wash away sin, but which makes us capable of receiving
forgiveness. There must be the comfort which comes from pardon received;
and there must be the yielding of ourselves to the Supreme Will, which
is the true root of all meekness, in the face of antagonism from
creatures and of opposition from circumstances. When thus a man’s
self-conceit is beaten out of him, and he knows how far he is from the
possession of any real, deep righteousness of his own; and when,
further, his heart has glowed with the consciousness of forgiveness; and
when, further, his will has bowed itself before the Father in heaven,
then there will spring in his heart a hungering and thirsting, deeper
far and far more certain of fruition, than ever can be realised in
another heart, a stranger to such experiences. Brethren, if we are ever
to possess the righteousness which is itself blessed, it must be because
we have the hunger and the thirst which are sharpened and accentuated by
profound discovery of our own evil, lowly penitence before God, and glad
assurance of free and full forgiveness.
Then note, still further, how that which is pronounced blessed is not
the realisation of a desire, but the desire itself. And that is so, not
only because, as I said, all noble aspiration is good, fulfilled or
unfulfilled, and aim is of more importance than achievement, and what a
man strongly wishes is often the revelation of his deepest self, and the
prophecy of what he will be; but Christ puts the desire for a certain
quality here as in line with the possession of a number of other
qualities attained, because He would hint to us that such a
righteousness as shall satisfy the immortal hunger and thirst of our
souls is one to be received in answer to longing, and not to be
manufactured by our own efforts.
It is a gift; and the condition of receiving the gift is to wish it
honestly, earnestly, deeply, continually. The Psalmist had a glimpse of
the same truth when he crowned his description of the man who was fit to
ascend the hill of the Lord, and to stand in His holy place, with, ‘he
shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God
of his salvation.’
Of course, in saying that the first step towards the possession of this
divinely bestowed and divinely blessed righteousness is not effort but
longing, I do not forget that the retention of it, and the working of it
into our characters, and out in our conduct, must be the result of our
own continual diligence. But it is effort based on faith; and it is
mainly, as I believe, the effort to keep open the line of communication
between us and God, the great Giver, which ensures our possession of
this gift of God. Dear friends, the righteousness that avails for us is
not of our making, but of God’s giving, through Jesus Christ.
So, before I pass to the other thoughts of my text, may I pause here for
a moment? ‘Blessed are they that hunger and thirst’ — think of the
picture that suggests — the ravenous desire of a starving man, the
almost fierce longing of a parched throat. Is that picture of the
intensity, of the depth, of our desires to be good? Do we professing
Christian men and women long to be delivered from our evils and to be
clothed in righteousness, with an honesty and an earnestness and a
continuity of longing which would make such words as these of my text
anything else, if applied to us, than the bitterest irony? Oh, one looks
out over the Christian Church, and one looks — which is more to the
purpose — into one’s own heart, and contrasts the tepid, the lazy, the
occasional, and, I am afraid, the only half-sincere wishes to be better,
with the unmistakable earnestness and reality of our longings to be
rich, or wise, or prosperous, or famous, or happy in our domestic
relationships, and the like. Alas! alas! that the whole current of the
great river of so many professing Christians’ desires runs towards earth
and creatures, and the tiniest little trickle is taken off, like a lade
for a mill, from the great stream, and directed towards higher things.
It is hunger and thirst after righteousness that is blessed. You and I
can tell whether our desires deserve such a name as that.
II. And now, secondly, the satisfying of this divine hunger of the
soul.
‘They shall be filled,’ says our Lord. Now all these promises appended
to the Beatitudes have a double reference — to the certainty of the
present, and to the perfection of the future. That there is such a
double reference may be made very obvious if we notice that the first of
the promises, which includes them all, and of which the others are but
aspects and phases, is cast into the present tense, whilst the remainder
stand in the future. ‘Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,’ not shall be —
‘they shall be comforted,’ they ‘shall inherit the earth,’ and so on.
So, then, we are warranted, indeed we are obliged, to regard this great
promise in the text as having two epochs of fulfilment — one partially
here upon earth, one complete hereafter. And these two differ, not in
kind, but in degree.
So then, with regard even to the present, ‘they shall be filled.’ Should
not that be a gospel to the seeking spirit of man, who knows so well
what it is to be crucified with the pangs of a vain desire, and to set
his heart upon that which never comes into his hands ? There is one
region in which nothing is so impossible as that any desire should be in
vain, or any wish should be unfulfilled, and it is the region into which
Christ points us in these great words of my text. Turn away from earth,
where fulfilled desires and unfulfilled are often equally disappointed
ones. Turn away from the questionable satisfactions which come to those
whose hearts go out in longing for love, wisdom, wealth, transitory
felicity; and be sure of this, that the one longing which never will be
disappointed, nor, when answered, will prove to have given us but ashes
instead of bread, is the longing to be like God and like Christ. That
desire alone is sure to be fulfilled, and, being fulfilled, is sure to
be blessed.
It is not true that all desires after righteousness are fulfilled. Those
which spring up, as I have said, in men’s hearts sporadically, and apart
from the background of the experiences of my text, are not always, not
often, even partially accomplished. There are in every land, no doubt,
souls that thirst after righteousness, as they are able to discern it.
And we are sure of this, that no such effort and longing passes
unnoticed by Him ‘who hears the young ravens when they cry,’ and is not
deaf to the prayer of men who long to be good. But the experience of the
bulk of us, apart from Jesus Christ, is ‘the things that I would not,
these I do, and the things that I would, these I do not.’ The hunger and
thirst after righteousness, imperfect as they are, which are felt at
intervals by all men, do not avail to break the awful continuity of
their conduct as evil in the sight of God and of their own consciences.
And so, just because every man knows something of the sting of this
desire after righteousness, which yet remains for the most part
unfulfilled, the world is full of sadness. ‘Oh, wretched man that I am,
who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ comes to be the
expression of the noblest amongst us. Then this great Gospel comes to
us, and the Nazarene confidently fronts a world dimly conscious of its
need, and sometimes miserable because it is bad, and says: ‘Ho! every
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters .... Come to Me, and drink.’
What right had He to stand thus and promise that every desire after
goodness should be fulfilled in Him ? He had the right, because He
Himself had the power and the purpose to fulfil it. For this is the very
heart of His Gospel: that He will give to every one who asks it that
spirit of life which was His own, and which ‘shall make us free from the
law of sin and death.’
Thus, dear friends, we have to be content to take the place of
recipients, and to accept, not to work out for ourselves, this
righteousness for which, more or less feebly and all of us too feebly,
we do sometimes long. Oh, believe me away from Him you will never
receive into your characters a goodness that will satisfy yourselves.
Siberian prisoners sometimes break their chains and escape for some
distance. They are generally taken back and again shut up in their
captivity. If we are able, as we are in some measure, to break the
bondage of evil in ourselves, we are not able to complete our
emancipation by any skill, effort, or act of ours. We must be content to
receive the blessing. There is no loom of earth which can weave, and no
needle that man’s hands can use which can stitch together, the pure
garment that befits a soul. We must be content to take the robe of
righteousness which Jesus Christ has wrought, and to strip off, by His
help, the ancient self, splashed with the filth of the world, and
spotted by the flesh: and to ‘put on the new man,’ which Christ, and
Christ alone, bestows.
As for the future fulfilment of this promise — desire will live in
heaven, desire will dilate the spirit, the dilated spirit will be
capable of fuller gifts of Godlikeness, and increased capacity will
ensure increased reception. Thus, through eternity, in blessed
alternation, we shall experience the desire that brings new gifts and
the satisfying that produces new desires.
Dear friends, all that I have been trying to say in this sermon is
gathered up into the one word — ‘that I may be found in Him, not having
my own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the
righteousness which is of God by faith.’ |
|
MT 5:7 THE FIFTH BEATITUDE
Alexander Maclaren |
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
obligatior 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 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 fails,
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 thou,
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.
III. Lastly, notice the requital, ‘They shall obtain mercy.’
Now, it is a wretched weakening of that great thought to suppose that it
means that if A. is merciful to B., B. will be merciful to A. That is
sometimes true, and sometimes it is not. It does not so very much matter
whether it is true or not; that is not what Jesus Christ means. All
these Beatitudes are God’s gifts, and this is God’s gift too. It is His
mercy which the merciful man obtains.
But you say: ‘Have you not just been telling us that this sense and
experience of God’s mercy must precede my mercy, and now you say that my
mercy must precede God’s?’ No; I do not say that it must precede it; I
do say that my mercifulness is, as it were, lodged between the segments
of a golden circle, and has on one side the experience of the divine
mercy which quickens mine by thankfulness and imitation; on the other
side, the larger experience of the divine mercy which follows upon my
walking after the example of my Lord.
This is only one case of the broad general principle, ‘to him that hath
shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken even that
which he hath.’ Salvation is no such irreversible gift as that once
bestowed a man can go on anyhow and it will continue; but it is given in
such a fashion as that, for its retention, and still more for its
increase, there must be a certain line of feeling and of action.
Our Lord does not mean to say, of course, that this one isolated member
of a series carries with it the whole power of bringing down upon a man
the blessings which are only due to the combination of the whole series,
but that it stands as one of that linked band which shall receive the
blessing from on high. And the blessing here is stated in accordance
with the particular Grace in question, according to that great law of
retaliation which brings life unto life and death unto death.
No man who, having received the mercy of God, lives harsh, hard,
self-absorbed, implacable, and uncommunicative, will keep that mercy in
any vivid consciousness or to any blessed issue. The servant took his
fellow-servant by the throat, and said, ‘Pay me that thou owest,’ and
his master said, ‘Deliver him to the tormentors until he pay the
uttermost farthing.’ You receive your salvation as a free gift; you keep
it by feelings and conduct correspondent to the gift.
Though benevolence which has an eye to self is no benevolence, it is
perfectly legitimate, and indeed absolutely necessary, that whilst the
motive for mercifulness is mercy received, the encouragement to
mercifulness should be mercy still to be given. ‘ Walk in love, as
Christ also hath loved us’; and when you think of your own unworthiness,
and of the great gifts which a gracious God has given, let these impel
you to move amongst men as copies of God, and be sure that you deepen
your spiritual life, not only by meditation and by faith, but by
practical work, and by showing towards all men mercy like the mercy
which God has bestowed upon you. |
|
MT 5:8 THE SIXTH BEATITUDE
Alexander Maclaren |
AT
first hearing one scarcely knows whether the character described in this
great saying, or the promise held out, is the more inaccessible to men.
‘The pure in heart’: who may they be? Is there one of us that can
imagine himself possessed of a character fitting him for the vision of
God, or such as to make him bear with delight that dazzling blaze? ‘They
shall see God,’ whom ‘no man hath seen at any time, nor can see.’ Surely
the requirement is impossible, and the promise not less so. But does
Jesus Christ mock us with demands that cannot be satisfied, and dangle
before us hopes that can never be realised? There have been many
moralists and would-be teachers who have done that. What would be the
use of saying to a man lying on a battlefield sore wounded, and with
both legs shot off, ‘If you will only get up and run, you will be safe’?
What would be the use of telling men how blessed they would be if they
were the opposite of what they are? But that is not Christ’s way.
These words, lofty and remote as they seem, are in truth amongst the
most hopeful and radiant that ever came from even His lips. For they
offer the realisation of an apparently impossible character, they
promise the possession of an apparently impossible vision; and they
soothe fears, and tell us that the sight from which, were it possible,
we should sometimes fain shrink, is the source of our purest gladness.
So there are three things, it seems to me, worth our notice in these
great words — How hearts can be made pure; how the pure heart can see
God; and how the sight can be simple blessedness.
I. How hearts can be made pure.
Now, the key which has unlocked for us, in previous sermons, the
treasures of meaning in these Beatitudes, is especially necessary here.
For, as I have said, if you take this to be a mere isolated saying, it
becomes a mockery and a pain. But if you connect it, as our Lord would
have us connect it, with all the preceding links of this wreathed chain
describing the characteristics of a devout soul, then it assumes an
altogether different appearance. ‘The pure in heart’ are they who have
exercised and received the previous qualifications and bestowments from
God. That is to say, there must precede all such purity as is capable of
the divine vision, the poverty of spirit which recognises its true
condition, the mourning which rightly feels the gravity and awfulness of
that condition, the desire for its opposite, which will never be the
‘hunger and thirst’ of a soul, except it is preceded by a profound sense
of sin and the penitence that ensues thereupon.
But when these things have gone before, and when they have been
accompanied, as they surely will be, with the results that flow from
them without an interval of time — viz, enrichment with possession of
the kingdom, the comforting and drying of the tears of penitence, and
the possession of a righteousness bestowed because it is desired, and
not won because it is worked for — then, and only then, will the heart
be purged and defecated from its evils and its self-regard, and its eyes
opened and couched and strengthened to behold undazzled the eternal
light of God. The word of my text, standing alone, ministers despair.
Regarded where Christ set it, as one of the series of characteristics
which He has been describing, it kindles the brightest and surest hope.
‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?’ No; but
God can change them; and the implication of my text, regarded in its due
relation to these other Beatitudes, is just that the requisite purity is
not of man’s working, but is God’s gift. The same truth which here
results from the study of the place of our text in this series is
condensed into a briefer, but substantially equivalent, form in the
saying of another part of the New Testament, about ‘purifying their
hearts by faith.’
Dear brethren, we come back to the old truth — all a man’s hope of, and
effort after, reformation and self-improvement must begin with the
consciousness of sin, the lament over it, the longing for divine
goodness, the opening of the heart for the reception thereof; and only
then can we rise to these serene heights of purity of heart. This, and
this alone, is the way by which ‘a clean thing’ can be brought ‘ out of
an unclean one,’ and men stained and foul with evil, and bound under the
chains of that which is the mother of all evil, the undue making
themselves the centres of their lives, can be washed and cleansed and
emancipated, and God be made the end and the aim, the motive and the
goal, the power and the reward, of all their work. Righteousness is a
gift to begin with, and it is a gift bestowed on condition of
‘repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.’ We all have
longings after purity, suppressed, dashed, contradicted a thousand times
in our lives day by day, but there they are; and the only way by which
they can be fully satisfied is when we go with our foul hands, empty as
well as foul, and lift them up to God, and say, ‘Give what Thou
commandest, even the clean heart, and we shall be clean.’
But then, do not let us forget, either, that this gift bestowed not once
and for ever, but continuously if there be continuous desire, is to be
utilised, appropriated, worked into our characters, and worked out in
our lives, by our own efforts, as well as by our own faith. ‘Having,
therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from
all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of
the Lord.’ ‘Every man that hath this’ gift bestowed, ‘purifieth himself
even as He is pure.’ He that brings to us the gift of regeneration, by
which we receive the new nature which is free from sin, calls to each of
us as He presents to us the basin with the cleansing water, ‘Wash you,
make you clean; put away the evil of your doings;... cease to do evil,
learn to do well.’ ‘What God hath joined together let not man put
asunder,’ viz. the act of faith by which we receive, the act of
diligence by which we use, the purifying power.
II. Note how the pure heart sees God.
One is tempted to plunge into mystical depths when speaking upon such a
text as this, but I wish to resist the temptation now, and to deal with
it in a plain, practical fashion. Of course I need not remind you, or do
more than simply remind you, that the matter in question here is no
perception by sense of Him who is invisible, nor is it, either, an
adequate and direct knowledge and comprehension of Him who is infinite,
and whom a man can no more comprehend than he can stretch his short arms
round the flaming orb of the central sun. But still, there is a relation
to God possible for sinful men when they have been purified through the
faith that is in Jesus Christ, which is so direct, so immediate, that it
deserves the name of vision; and which, as I believe, is the ground of a
firmer certitude, and of a no less clear apprehension, than is the sense
from which the name is borrowed. For the illusions of sense have no
place in the sight which the pure heart has of its Father, God.
Only, remember that here, and in the interpretation of all such
Scriptural words, we have ever to be guided and governed by the great
principle which our Lord laid down, under very solemn circumstances,
when He said: ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ Jesus Christ,
whose name from eternity is the Word, is, from eternity to eternity,
that which the name indicates — viz, the revealing activity of the
eternal God. And, as I believe, wherever there have been kindled in
men’s hearts, either by the contemplation of nature and providence, or
by the intuitions of their own spirits, any glints or glimpses of a God,
there has been the operation of ‘the Light that lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.’ And far beyond the limits of historical
Revelation within Israel, as recorded in Scripture, that Eternal Word
has been unveiling, as men’s dim eyes were capable of perceiving it, the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God. But for us who stand in the
full blaze of that historical manifestation in the character and work of
Jesus Christ our Saviour, our vision of God is neither more nor less
than the apprehension and the realisation of Christ as ‘ God manifest in
the flesh.’
Whether you call it the vision of God, or whether you call it communion
with God in Jesus Christ, or whether you fall back upon the other
metaphor of God dwelling in us and we dwelling in God, it all comes to
the same thing, the consciousness of His presence, the realisation of
His character, the blessed assurance of loving relations with Him, and
the communion in mind, heart, will, and conduct, with God who has come
near to us all in Jesus Christ.
Now, I need not remind you, I suppose, that for such a realisation and
active, real communion, purity of heart is indispensable. That is no
arbitrary requirement, but inherent, as we all know, in the very nature
of the case. If we think of what He is, we shall feel that only the pure
in heart can really pass into loving fellowship with Him. ‘How can two
walk together except they be agreed?’ And if we reflect upon the history
of our own feelings and realisation of God’s presence with us, we shall
see that impurity always drew a membrane over the eye of our souls, or
cast a mist of invisibility over the heavens. The Smallest sin hides God
from us. A very, very little grain of dye stuff will darken miles of a
river, and make it incapable of reflecting the blue sky and the
sparkling stars. The least evil done and loved blurs and blots, if it
does not eclipse, for us the doers the very Sun of Righteousness
Himself. No sinful men can walk in the midst of that fiery furnace and
not be consumed. ‘The pure in heart’ — and only they — ‘shall see God.’
Nor need I remind you, I suppose, that in this, as in all these
Beatitudes, the germinal fulfilment in the present life is not to be
parted off by a great gap from the perfect fulfilment in the life which
is to come. And so I do not dwell so much on the differences, great and
wonderful as these must necessarily be, between the manner of
apprehension and communion with God which it is reserved for heaven to
bestow upon us, and the manner of those which we may enjoy here; but I
rather would point to the blessed thought that in essence they are one,
however in degree they may be different. No doubt, changed
circumstances, new capacities, the withdrawal of time and sense, the
dropping away of the veil of flesh, which is the barrier between us and
the unseen order of things in which ‘ we live and move and have our
being,’ will induce changes and progresses in the manner and in the
degree of that vision about which it would be folly for us to speak. If
there were anything here with which we could compare the state of the
blessed in heaven, in so far as it differs from their state on earth, we
could form some conception of these differences; but if there were
anything here with which we could compare it, it would be less glorious
than it is. It is well that we should have to say, ‘Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
that God hath prepared.’ So let us be thankful that ‘it doth not yet
appear what we shall be’; and let us never allow our ignorance of the
manner to make us doubt or neglect the fact, seeing that we know ‘that
when He shall appear.., we shall see Him as He is.’
III. Lastly, notice how this sight brings blessedness.
There is nothing else that will ‘satisfy the eye with seeing.’ The
vision of God, even in that incipient and imperfect form which is
possible upon earth, is the one thing that will calm our distractions,
that will supply our needs, that will lift our lives to a level of
serene power and blessedness, unattainable by any other way. Such a
sight will dim all the dazzling illusions of earth, as, when the sun
leaps into the heavens, the stars hide their faces and faint into
invisibility. It will make us lords of ourselves, masters of the world,
kings over time and sense and the universe. Everything will be different
when ‘earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with
God.’ That is what is possible for a Christian holding fast by Jesus
Christ, and in Him having communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Brethren, I venture to say no word about the blessedness of that future.
Heaven’s golden gates keep their secret well. Even the purest joys of
earth, about which poets have sung for untold centuries, after all
singing need to be tasted before they are conceived of; and all our
imaginings about the blessedness yonder is but like what a chrysalis
might dream in its tomb as to the life of the radiant winged creature
which it would one day become.
Let us be content to be ignorant, and believe with confidence that we
shall find that the vision of God is the heaven of heavens.
We shall owe that eternal vision to the eternal Revealer; for, as I
believe, Scripture teaches us that it is only in Him that the glorified
saints see the Father, as it is only in Him that here on earth we have
the vision of God. That sight is not, like the bodily sense to which it
is compared, a far-off perception of an un-grasped brightness, but it is
the actual possession of what we behold. We see God when we have God.
When we have God we have enough.
But I dare not close without one other word. There is a vision of God
possible to an impure heart, in which there is no blessedness. There
comes a day in which ‘they shall call upon the rocks to fall and cover
them from the face of Him that sits upon the throne.’ The alternative is
before each of us, dear friends-either ‘every eye shall see Him, and
they also which pierced Him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail
because of Him’; or, ‘I shall behold Thy face in righteousness. I shall
be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.’ If we cry, ‘Create a
clean heart in me, O God!’ He will answer, ‘I will give you a new heart,
and take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a
heart of flesh, and I will pour clean water upon you, and ye shall be
clean.’ |
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Mt 5:9 THE SEVENTH BEATITUDE
Alexander Maclaren |
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‘ Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of
God.’ Matthew 5:9.
THIS is the last Beatitude
descriptive of the character of the Christian. There follows one more,
which describes his reception by the world. But this one sets the top
stone, the shining apex, upon the whole temple-structure which the
previous Beatitudes had Been gradually building up. You may remember
that I have pointed out in previous sermons how all these various traits
of the Christian life are deduced from’ the root of poverty of spirit.
You may also remember how I have had occasion to show that if we
consider that first Beatitude, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ as the
root and mother of all the rest, the remainder are so arranged as that
we have alternately a grace which regards mainly the man himself and his
relations to God, and one which also includes his relations to man.
Now there are three of these which
look out into the world, and these three are consummated by this one of
my text. These are ‘the meek,’ which describes a man’s attitude to
opposition and hatred; ‘the merciful,’ which describes his indulgence in
judgment and his pitifulness in action; and’ the peacemakers.’ For
Christian people are not merely to bear injuries and to recompense them
with pity and with love, but they are actively to try to bring about a
wholesomer and purer state of humanity, and to breathe the peace of God,
which passes understanding, over all the janglings and struggles of this
world.
So, I think, if we give a due
depth of significance to that name ‘peacemaker,’ we shall find that this
grace worthily completes the whole linked series, and is the very jewel
which clasps the whole chain of Christian and Christlike
characteristics.
I. How are Christ’s peacemakers
made?
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 ‘peace-making’ 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.
II. What is the peace which
Christ’s peacemakers bring?
This is a very favourite text with
people that know very little of the depths of Christianity. They fancy
that it appeals to common sense and men’s natural consciences, apart
altogether from minutenesses of doctrine or of Christian experience.
They are very much mistaken. No doubt there is a surface of truth, but
only a surface, in the application that is generally given to these
words of our text, as if it meant nothing more than ‘ he is a good man
that goes about and tries to make contending people give up their
quarrels, and produces a healing atmosphere of tranquillity wherever he
goes.’ That is perfectly true, but there is a great deal more in the
text than that. If we consider the Scriptural usage of this great word
‘peace,’ and all
the ground that it covers in human experience; if we remember that it
enters as an element into Christ’s own name, the ‘Peace-Bringer,’ the
‘Prince of Peace’; and if we notice, as I have already done, the place
which this Beatitude occupies in the series, we shall be obliged to look
for some far deeper meaning before we can understand the sweep of our
Lord’s intention here.
I do not think that I am going one
inch too far, or forcing meanings into His words which they are not
intended to bear, when I say that the first characteristic of the peace,
which His disciples have been passed through their apprenticeship in
order to fit them to bring, is the peace of reconciliation with God. The
cause of all the other fightings in the world is that men’s relation to
the Father in heaven is disturbed, and that, whilst there flow out from
Him only amity and love, these are met by us with antagonism often, with
opposition of will often, with alienation of heart often, and with
indifference and forgetfulness almost uniformly. So the first thing to
be done to make men at peace with one another and with themselves is to
rectify their relation to God, and bring peace there.
We often hear in these days
complaints of Christian Churches and Christian people because they do
not fling themselves, with sufficient energy to please the censors, into
movements which are intended to bring about happier relations in
society. The longest way round is sometimes the shortest way home. It
does not belong to all of us Christians, and I doubt whether it belongs
to the Christian Church as such at all, to fling itself into the
movements to which I have referred. But if a man go and carry to men the
great message of a reconciled and a reconciling God manifest in Jesus
Christ, and bringing peace between men and God, he will have done more
to sweeten society and put an end to hostility than I think be will be
likely to do by any other method. Christian men and women, whatever else
you and I are here for, we are here mainly that we may preach, by lip
and life, the great message that in Christ is our peace, and that God
‘was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’
We are not to leave out, of
course, that which is so often taken as being the sole meaning of the
great word of my text. There is much that we are all bound to do to
carry the tranquillising and soothing influences of Gospel principles
and of Christ’s example into the littlenesses of daily life. Any fool
can stick a lucifer match into a haystack and make a blaze. It is easy
to promote strife. There is a malicious love of it in us all; and
ill-natured
gossip has a great deal to do in bringing it about. But it takes
something more to put the fire out than it did to light it, and there is
no nobler office for Christians than to seek to damp down all these
devil’s flames of envy and jealousy and mutual animosity. We have to do
it, first, by making very sure that we do not answer scorn with scorn,
gibes with gibes, hate with hate, but ‘seek to overcome evil with good.’
It takes two to make a quarrel, and your most hostile antagonist cannot
break the peace unless you help him. If you are resolved to keep it,
kept it will be.
May I say another word? I think
that our text, though it goes a good deal deeper, does also very plainly
tell us Christian folk what is our duty in relation to literal warfare.
There is no need for me to discuss here the question as to whether
actual fighting with armies and swords is ever legitimate or not, It is
a curious kind of Christian duty certainly, if it ever gets to be one.
And when one thinks of the militarism that is crushing Europe and
driving her ignorant classes to wild schemes of revolution; and when one
thinks of the hell of battlefields, of the miseries of the wounded, of
mourning widows, of ruined peaceful peasants, of the devil’s passions
that war sets loose, some of us find it extremely hard to believe that
all that is ever in accordance with the mind of Christ. But whether you
agree with me in that or no, surely my text points to the duty of the
Christian Church to take up a very much more decisive position in
reference to the military spirit than, alas! it ever has done. Certainly
it does seem to be not very obviously in accordance with Christ’s
teachings that men-of-war should be launched with a religious service,
or that Te Deums should be sung because thousands have been killed. It
certainly does seem to be something like a satire on European
Christianity that one of the chief lessons we have taught the East is
that we have instructed the Japanese how to use Western weapons to fight
their enemies. Surely, surely, if Christian churches laid to heart as
they ought these plain words of the Master, they would bring their
united influence to bear against that demon of war, and that pinchbeck,
spurious glory which is connected with it. ‘Blessed are the
peacemakers’: let us try to earn the benediction.
III. Lastly, note the issue of
this peacemaking. ‘They shall be called the sons of God.’ Called? By
whom ? Christ does not say, but it should not be difficult to ascertain.
It seems to me that to suppose that it is by men degrades this promise,
instead of making it the climax of the whole series. Besides, it is not
true that if a Christian man lives as I have been trying to describe,
protesting against certain evils, trying to diffuse an atmosphere of
peace round about him; and, above all, seeking to make known the Name of
the great Peacemaker, men will generally call him a ‘son of God.’ The
next verse but one tells us what they will call him. ‘Blessed are ye
when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil
against you falsely for My sake.’ They are a great deal more likely to
have stones and rotten eggs flung at them than to be pelted with
bouquets of scented roses of popular approval. No! no! it is not man’s
judgment that is meant here. It matters very little what men call us. It
matters everything what God calls us. It is He who will call them ‘sons
of God.’ So the Apostle John thought that Christ meant, for he very
beautifully and touchingly quotes this passage when he says, ‘Beloved!
behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we
should be called the sons of God.’
God’s calling is a recognition of
men for what they are. God owns the man that lives in the fashion that
we have been trying to outline — God owns him for His child; manifestly
a son, because he has the Father’s likeness. ‘ Be ye therefore imitators
of God as beloved children, and walk in love.’ God in Christ is the
first Peacemaker, and they who go about the world proclaiming His peace
and making peace, bear the image of the heavenly, and are owned by God
as His sons.
What does that owning mean? Well,
it means a great deal which has yet to be disclosed, but it means this,
too, that the whisper of the Voice which owns us for children will be
heard by ourselves. The Spirit which cries, ‘Abba, Father!’ will open
our ears to hear Him say, ‘Thou art My beloved Son.’ Or, to put it into
plain English, there is no surer way by which we can come to the calm,
happy, continual consciousness of being the children of God than by this
living like Him, to spread the peace of God over all hearts.
I have said in former sermons that
all these promises, which are but the natural outcome of the
characteristics to which they are attached, have a double reference,
being fulfilled in germ here, and in maturity hereafter. Like the rest,
this one has that double reference. For the consciousness, here and now,
that we are the children of God is but, as it were, the morning twilight
of what shall hereafter be an unsetting meridian sunshine. What depths
of divine assimilation, what mysteries of calm, peaceful, filial
fellowship, what riches beyond count of divine inheritance, lie in the
name of son, the possession of these alone can tell. For the same
Apostle, whose comment upon these words we have already quoted, goes on
to say, ‘ It doth not yet appear what we shall be.’
Only we have one assurance, wide
enough for all anticipation, and firm enough for solid hope: ‘If
children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.’ He
must make us sons before we can be called sons of God. He must give us
peace with God, with ourselves, with men, with circumstances, before we
can go forth effectually to bring peace to others. If He has given us
these good things, He has bound us to spread them. Let us do so. And if
our peace ever is spoken in vain as regards others, it will come back to
us again; and we shall be kept in perfect peace, even in the midst of
strife, until we enter at last into the city of peace and serve the King
of Peace for ever.
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Mt 5:10 THE EIGHTH BEATITUDE
Alexander Maclaren |
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‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ — Matthew 5:10.
WE have seen the description of the
true subjects of the kingdom growing into form and completeness before
our eyes in the preceding verses, which tell us what they are in their
own consciousness, what they are in their longings, what they become in
inward nature by God’s gift of purity, how they move among men as angels
of God, meek, merciful, peace-bringing. Is anything more needed for
complete portraiture, any added touch to the picture? Yes — what the
world is to them, what are its wages for such work, what its perception
of such characters. Their relations to it t are those of peace-bringers,
reconcilers; its to them are those of hostility and dislike. Blessed are
the persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
I take these words to be as
universal and permanent in their application as any which have preceded
them. This characteristic is, like all the others, the result of those
which go before it and presupposes their continuous operation. The
benediction which is attached is not an arbitrary promise, but stands in
as close a relation of consequence to the characteristic as do the
others. And it is marked out as the last in the series by being a
repetition of the first, to express the idea of completeness, a rounded
whole; to suggest that all the others are but elements of this, and that
the initial blessing given to the poor in spirit is identical with that
which is the reward of the highest Christian character, the one
possessing implicitly what the other has in full development.
I. The world’s recompense to
the peace-bringers.
It may be thought that this
clause, at all events, has reference to special epochs only, and
especially to the first founding of Christianity. Such a reference, of
course, there is. And very remarkable is it how clearly and honestly
Christ always warned would-be disciples of what they would earn in this
world by following Him.
But He seems to take especial
pains to show that He here proclaims a principle of equal generality
with the others, by separating the application of it to His immediate
hearers which follows in the next verse, from the universal statement in
the text. Their individual experience was but to
illustrate the general rule, not to exhaust it. And you remember how
frequently the same thought is set forth in Scripture in the most
perfectly general terms.
1. Notice that antagonism is inevitable between a true Christian and the
world.
Take the character as it is
sketched in verses preceding. Point by point it is alien from the
sympathies and habits of irreligious men. The principles are different,
the practices are different.
A true Christian ought to be a
standing rebuke to the world, an incarnate conscience.
There are but two ways of ending
that antagonism: either by bringing the world up to Christian character,
or letting Christian character down to the world.
2. The certain and uniform
result is opposition and dislike — persecution in its reality.
Darkness hateth light.
Some will, no doubt, be touched;
there is that in all men which acknowledges how awful goodness is. But
the loftier character is not loved by the lower which it loves Aristides
‘the Just.’ Christ Himself.
As to practice — a righteous life
will not make a man ‘popular.’ And as for ‘opinions’ — earnest religious
opinions of any sort are distasteful. Not the profession of them, but
the reality of them — especially those which seem in any way new or
strange — make the average man angrily intolerant of an earnest
Christianity which takes its creed seriously and insists on testing
conventional life by it. Indolence, self-complacency, and inborn
conservatism join forces in resenting the presence of such inconvenient
enthusiasts, who upset everything and want to ‘ turn the world upside
down.’
‘The moping
owl cloth to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her ivy tower,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign.’
The seeds of the persecuting
temper are in human nature, and they germinate in the storms which
Christianity brings with it.
3. The phases vary according to
circumstances.
We have not to look for the more
severe and gross kinds of persecution.
The tendency of the age is to
visit no man with penalties for his belief, but to allow the utmost
freedom of thought,
The effect of Christianity upon popular morality has been to bring men
up towards the standard of Christ’s righteousness.
The long proclamation of Christian
truth in England has the effect of making mere profession of it a
perfectly safe and even proper thing.
But the antagonism remains at
bottom the same.
Let a man earnestly accept even
the creeds of established religion and live by them, and he will find
that out. Let him seek to proclaim and enforce some of those truths of
Christianity whose bearing upon social and economical and ecclesiastical
questions is but partially understood. Let him set up and stick to a
high standard of Christian morality and see what comes of it, in
business, say, or in social life.
‘All that will live godly will
suffer persecution.’
4. The present forms are
perhaps not less hard to bear than the old ones.
They are, no doubt, very small in
contrast with the lions in the arena or the fires of Smithfield. The
curled lip, the civil scorn, the alienation of some whose good opinion
we would fain have, or, if we stand in some public position, the
poisonous slanders of the press, and the contumacious epithets, are
trivial but very real tokens of dislike. We have the assassin’s tongue
instead of the assassin’s dagger. But yet such things may call for as
much heroism as braving a rack, and the spirit that shoots out the
tongue may be as bad as the spirit that yelled, ‘Christianos ad leones.’
5. The great reason why
professing Christians now know so little about persecution is because
there is so little real antagonism.
‘If ye were of the world, the
world would love his own.’ The Church has leavened the world, but the
world has also leavened the Church; and it seems agreed by common
consent that there is to be no fanatical goodness of the early primitive
pattern. Of course, then, there will be no persecution, where
religion goes in silver slippers, and you find Christian men running
neck and neck with others, and no man can tell which is which.
Then, again, many escape by
avoiding plain Christian duty, shutting themselves up in their own
little coteries.
(a) Let us be sure that we
never flinch from our Christian character to buy anybody s good opinion.
It is not for us to lower our
flags to whoever fires across our bows. Do you never feel it an effort
to avow your principles? Do you never feel that they are being smiled
away in society? Are you not flattered by being shown that this religion
of yours is the one thing that stands between you and cordial reception
by these people?
(b) Let us be sure that it is
righteousness and Christ which are the grounds of anything of the sort
we have to bear, and not our own faults of temper and character.
(c) Let us be sure that we are
not persecutors ourselves. To be so is inherent in human nature.
Men have often been both
confessors and inquisitors. The spirit of censorious judgment, of fierce
hate, of impatient intolerance, has often disgraced Christian men. It is
for us to be only and always meek, merciful peace-bringers; and if men
will not accept truth, to seek to win and woo them, not to be angry.
It is very hard to be both firm
and tolerant, not letting the foolish heart expand into a lazy glow of
benevolence to all beliefs, and so perilling one’s own; nor letting
intense adherence to our own convictions darken into impotent wrath
against their harshest opponents. But let us remember that as God is our
great example of mercy, so Christ is our great example of patience, both
under the world’s unbelief and the world’s persecution.
II. God’s Gift to the
persecuted.
‘The kingdom of heaven.’
This last promise is the same as
the first — to express completeness, a rounded whole. All the others are
but elements of this.
That highest reward given to the perfectest saint is but the fuller
possession of what is given in germ to the humblest and sinfullest at
the very first. The poor in spirit gets it at the beginning.
It is not implied by this promise
that a Christian man’s blessedness depends on the accident of some other
person’s behaviour to him, or that martyrs have a place which none
others can reach. But theirs is the kingdom of heaven as a natural
result of the character which brings about persecution, and as a natural
result of the development of that character which persecution brings
about. This promise, like all the others, has its twofold fulfilment.
There is a present recompense.
Persecution is the result of a
character which brings Christians into the kingdom. Theirs is the
kingdom — they are subjects. To them it is given to enter.
Persecution makes the present
consciousness of the possession of the kingdom more vivid and joyous. It
brings the enforced sense of a vocation separate from the hostile
world’s. As Thomas Fuller puts it somewhere, in troublous times the
Church builds high, just as the men do in cities where there is little
room to expand on the ground level.
Persecution brightens and solidifies hope, and thus may become
infinitely sweet and blessed. How often it has been given to the martyr,
as it was given to Stephen, to see heaven opened and Jesus standing at
the right hand of God, as if risen to His feet to uphold as well as to
receive His servant. Paul and Silas made the prison walls ring with
their praises, though their backs were livid with wales and stained with
blood. And we, in our far smaller trials for Christ’s sake, may have the
same more conscious possession of the kingdom and brightened hope of yet
fuller possession of it.
There is a future recompense in
the perfect kingdom, where men are rewarded according to their
capacities. And if the way in which we have met the world’s evil has
been right, then that will have made us fit for a fuller possession.
In closing we recur to the thought of all these Beatitudes as a chain
and the beginning of all as being penitence and faith.
Many a poor man, or many a little child, may have a higher place in
heaven than some who have died at the stake for their Lord, for not our
history, but our character, determines our place there, and all the
fulness of the kingdom belongs to every one who with penitent heart
comes to God in Christ, and then by slow degrees from that root brings
forth first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.
Here is Jesus’ ideal of character
— poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungering and thirsting after
righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted for
righteousness’ sake. To be these is to be blessed. And here is Jesus’
ideal of what, over and above the inherent blessedness of such a
character, constitutes the true blessedness of a soul — the possession
of the kingdom of heaven, comfort from God, the inheritance of the earth
of which the inheritor may not own a yard, full satisfaction of the
longing after righteousness, the obtaining of mercy from God, the name
of sons of God, and, last as first, the possession of the kingdom of
heaven. Is Jesus’ ideal yours? Do you believe that such a character is
the highest that a man can attain, that in itself it is truly blessed,
and will bring about results in contrast with which all baser-born joys
are coarse and false ? Happy will you be if you so believe, and if so
believing you make the ideal which He paints your aim, and therefore
secure the blessedness which He attaches to it as your exceeding great
reward. |
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Mt 5:13
SALT WITHOUT SAVOUR
Alexander Maclaren |
‘ Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour,
wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to
be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.’ — Matthew 5:13.
THESE words must have seemed
ridiculously presumptuous when they were first spoken, and they have too
often seemed mere mockery and irony in the ages since. A Galilean
peasant, with a few of his rude countrymen who had gathered round him,
stands up there on the mountain, and says to them, ‘You, a handful, are
the people who are to keep the world from rotting, and to bring it to
all its best light.’ Strange when we think that Christ believed that
these men were able to do these grand functions because they drew their
power from Himself! Stranger still to think that, notwithstanding all
the miserable inconsistencies of the professing Church ever since, yet,
on the whole, the experience of history has verified these words! And
although some wise men may curl their lips with a sneer as they say
about us Christians, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth!’ yet the most
progressive, and the most enlightened, and the most moral portion of
humanity has derived its impulse to progress, its enlightenment as to
the loftiest truths, and the purest portion of its morality, from the
men who received their power to impart these from Jesus Christ.
And so, dear brethren, I have to
say two or three things now, which I hope will be plain and earnest and
searching, about the function of the Christian Church, and of each
individual member of it, as set forth in these words; about the solemn
possibility that the qualification for that function may go away from a
man; about the grave question as to whether such a loss can ever be
repaired; and about the certain end of the saltless salt.
I. First, then, as to the high
task of Christ’s disciples as here set forth.
‘Ye are the salt of the earth’!
The metaphor wants very little explanation, however much enforcement it
may require. It involves two things: a grave judgment as to the actual
state of society, and a lofty claim as to what Christ’s followers are
able to do to it.
A grave judgment as to the actual
state of society — it is corrupt and tending to corruption. You do not
salt a living thing. You salt a dead one that it may not be a rotting
one. And, Christ says by implication here, what
He says plainly more than once in other places: — ‘Human society,
without My influence, is a carcass that is rotting away and
disintegrating; and you, faithful handful, who have partially
apprehended the meaning of My mission, and have caught something of the
spirit of My life, you are to be rubbed into that rotting mass to
sweeten it, to arrest decomposition, to stay corruption, to give flavour
to its insipidity, and to save it from falling to pieces of its own
wickedness. Ye are the salt of the earth.’
Now, it is not merely because we
are the bearers of a truth that will do all this that we are thus spoken
of, but we Christian men are to do it by the influence of conduct and
character.
There are two or three thoughts
suggested by this metaphor. The chief one is that of our power, and
therefore our obligation, to arrest the corruption round us, by our own
purity. The presence of a good man hinders the devil from having
elbow-room to do his work. Do you and I exercise a repressive influence
(if we do not do anything better), so that evil and low toned life is
ashamed to show itself in our presence, and skulks back as do
wrong-doers from the bull’s-eye of a policeman’s lantern? It is not a
high function, but it is a very necessary one, and it is one that all
Christian men and women ought to discharge — that of rebuking and
hindering the operation of corruption, even if they have not the power
to breathe a better spirit into the dead mass.
But the example of Christian men
is not only repressive. It ought to tempt forth all that is best and
purest and highest in the people with whom they come in contact. Every
man who does right helps to make public opinion in favour of doing
right; and every man who lowers the standard of morality in his own life
helps to lower it in the community of which he is a part. And so in a
thousand ways that I have no need to dwell upon here, the men that have
Christ in their hearts and something of Christ’s conduct and character
repeated in theirs are to be the preserving and purifying influence in
the midst of this corrupt world.
There are two other points that I
name, and do not enlarge upon. The first of them is — salt does its work
by being brought into close contact with the substance upon which it is
to work. And so we, brought into contact as we are with much evil and
wickedness, by many common relations of friendship, of kindred, of
business, of proximity, of citizenship, and the like, we are not to seek
to withdraw ourselves from contact with the evil.
The only way by which the salt can purify is by being rubbed into the
corrupted thing.
And once more, salt does its work
silently, inconspicuously, gradually. ‘Ye are the light of the world,’
says Christ in the next verse. Light is far-reaching and brilliant,
flashing that it may be seen. That is one side of Christian work, the
side that most of us like best, the conspicuous kind of it. Ay! but
there is a very much humbler, and, as I fancy, a very much more useful,
kind of work that we have all to do. We shall never be the ‘light of the
world,’ except on condition of being ‘the salt of the earth.’ You have
to play the humble, inconspicuous, silent part of checking corruption by
a pure example before you can aspire to play the other part of raying
out light into the darkness, and so drawing men to Christ Himself.
Now, brethren, why do I repeat all these common, threadbare platitudes,
as I know they are? Simply in order to plant upon them this one question
to the heart and conscience of you Christian men and women : — Is there
anything in your life that makes this text, in its application to you,
other else than the bitterest mockery ?
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