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The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 STUDIES IN THE BEATITUDES 
 
 “fames Reid, M.A. 
 
 
 
 George H. Doran Company 
 
THE KEY TO THE KINGDOM 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
General Preface > o2@ oe oc 
 
 IE Christian life 1s a many-sided 
 
 thing, as many-sided as life itself, 
 since all life 1s meant to be Christian. 
 Tt includes belief and conduct ; experience 
 and hope; prayer and service; church 
 and home and daily task; the joy of a 
 divine revelation, and the upward climb 
 of the loftiest ethic the world has ever 
 known. And according to the history 
 and environment of each soul who tries 
 to live the life are the facets which Cbhris- 
 tianity reveals and the problems 1t brings 
 to light. These little books are intended 
 to treat various aspects of this many- 
 sided theme in a brief and interesting 
 way, in a form pleasant to handle and 
 attractive not least to younger readers. 
 
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Contents o om om 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE NATURE OF A CHRISTIAN 
 
 MAN . : ° ° ° 
 THE POOR IN SPIRIT e ° 
 THEY THAT MOURN. ° 
 THE MEEK . ° ° ° 
 
 THEY THAT HUNGER AND 
 
 THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 THE MERCIFUL e ° ° 
 THE PURE IN HEART e a 
 THE PEACEMAKERS ,. e s 
 THE PERSECUTED , ° * 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II 
 37 
 61 
 81 
 
 103 
 127 
 149 
 171 
 197 
 
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 = ae 
 
 cute 
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Cuapter I 
 
 THE NATURE OF A CHRISTIAN 
 MAN 
 
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 een Tet: | 
 
 HONG 
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 4 
 
 
 
I. The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 HE Beatitudes form, perhaps, the 
 most neglected part of the Sermon 
 on the Mount. They do not indeed 
 seem, at first sight, to have much 
 connexion with it. Our inclination is 
 to set them in a place by themselves and 
 to pass on to what appears to be the more 
 practical part of the teaching of Christ. 
 Various reasons might be suggested 
 for this neglect. One is that they are 
 very hard to understand. The wisdom 
 they teach lies very deep. It is true 
 many of the sayings of Jesus cannot be- 
 come clear to us till we are living by them. 
 Only as we trust their guidance do we 
 realize their power. But there are none 
 of which this is so true as it is of these. 
 We simply cannot take in the meaning of 
 the blessedness of the Beatitudes till 
 we are in the way to reach it. They 
 belong to a world so far removed from 
 
 II 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 the world of the “man in the street” 
 that, if he thinks of them at all, he thinks, 
 of them as visionary and all in the air. 
 The Western mind is essentially prac- 
 tical. Mr. Stephen Graham says that 
 the difference between West and East » 
 is the difference between Martha and 
 Mary. ‘The East finds its ideal in quiet 
 meditative devotion; the West in duty 
 and efficiency. Most of our people prefer 
 the way of Martha to that of Mary, and 
 find it hard to understand either Christ’s 
 rebuke of the one or His praise of the 
 other. Kipling puts the popular view, 
 with its quiet contempt for thé spirit of 
 Mary. 
 The Sons of Mary smile and are blesséd— 
 They know the angels are on their side. 
 They know that in them is the Grace confesséd. 
 And for them are the Mercies multiplied. 
 They sit at the Feet—they hear the Word— 
 They see how truly the Promise runs ; 
 They have cast their burden upon the Lord, 
 And—the Lord He lays it on Martha’s Sons ! 
 
 These Beatitudes suggest to us some- 
 12 
 
 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 thing too bright and good for human 
 nature’s daily food. At the best they 
 seem to offer a consolation prize for the 
 defeated, a comfort for the heart-broken, 
 a message for those who have failed in 
 the struggle of life—a second best. Chris- 
 tianity goes out, some think, to do the 
 work of salvage on the red fields of battle, 
 picking up the wounded and _ helpless 
 and giving them for the future a quiet 
 alms-house of the spirit where they can 
 take their rest and recover a certain 
 measure of happiness. Nothing could 
 be further from the mind of Jesus. 
 These Beatitudes were not offered by way 
 of solace for the defeated. They were 
 spoken to a group of strong, virile men 
 whom Christ was sending out to turn 
 the world upside down in His name. 
 But more: so far from having little con- 
 nexion with the Sermon on the Mount, 
 they are the indispensable preface to 
 all its very practical commands. They 
 offer the key to the Kingdom. They ~ 
 tell the secret of all its duty and service. 
 
 13 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 Matthew had the clearest insight into the 
 Master’s mind when he placed them 
 where they stand. That which follows 
 is a closed book till we have mastered 
 this opening page. For the point of 
 view of Jesus is nothing less than this— 
 that the duty laid down in the Sermon 
 on the Mount, the way of life prescribed 
 for those in the Kingdom are only possible 
 to a certain type of man, and that the 
 only type which is adequate to them, 
 is that which the Beatitudes describe. 
 
 It is a principle which we are quite 
 accustomed to accept that every sphere 
 of life demands its own type of person- 
 ality. The Arctic regions demand one 
 type of physical manhood ; the Tropics 
 demand another. The men who climbed 
 Mount Everest told us what difficulties 
 they had to face in making adjustments 
 with the high altitudes which they 
 traversed. ‘They had trouble in breath- 
 ing; the slightest exertion was pain. 
 When the lamas from the same region 
 visited Europe they had the corresponding 
 
 14 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 kind of difficulty. They had to make 
 
 adjustments with the lower levels. It is 
 the same with spheres other than the 
 physical. The rough work of the colonies 
 demands its own type of character ; 
 the delicate task of a diplomat at foreign 
 courts demands something quite different. 
 Half the failures in life come from putting 
 round men into square holes. Tragedy 
 was barely averted when R. L. Stevenson, 
 with his artistic temperament and delicate 
 frame, was set down to find his lifework 
 in the office of a lighthouse engineer. 
 The secret of success in any situation 
 is hidden in the man who meets it. 
 
 This gives us the clue to the message of 
 the Beatitudes. Jesus was describing , 
 there the kind of man needed for His 
 kind of world. He was suggesting a 
 contrast. The world of the materialist, 
 whose crown is success, and where the 
 strong and wealthy are counted happy, 
 demands its own kind of qualities. It 
 is not difficult to distinguish them. ‘They 
 are obvious enough. We have only to 
 
 15 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 think for a moment of a man like Napoleon 
 or, for that matter, of many another less 
 striking, whom in their various spheres 
 the’; world \) calls. successtullyaet he 
 materialist’s world, if a man is out only 
 for what it can give, will demand of him 
 the aggressive spirit, the clever, calculat- 
 ing mind, the heart not over-sensitive 
 to the ills of others, the gift of self- 
 confidence, the art of self-advertisement. 
 He will need to get rid of some finer 
 qualities which will be in his way. He 
 will not despise any motive which can 
 give him power either within himself or 
 over others. The passion of hatred, 
 the power of greed, the force of fear— 
 all these are valuable to him either to 
 kindle fires in his own blood or to use 
 in imposing his will on others. He 
 will need to learn to judge of success 
 by what it brings in of money or popular 
 esteem, and to find the centre of the 
 universe in himself. This is not to say 
 that he may not possess qualities which 
 Christ valued, which life in the Kingdom 
 
 16 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 will equally demand—the habit of fidelity 
 
 to a task, perseverance and self-discipline, 
 and the capacity, too, for taking pains 
 to the point of sacrifice. It is indeed a 
 question whether the successful man of 
 the world, as he is called, does not sacrifice 
 far more than the disciple of Christ. 
 The difference between the two is not, 
 as it is often assumed, that the Christian 
 has to give up so much more than the 
 other ; it is really a difference as to what 
 is given up and on what altar the offering 
 is made. Nor would one suggest for a 
 moment that a man cannot be a success, 
 even as the world uses the word, without 
 being a man of the world. There are 
 successful men who have also spiritual 
 quality, who win success while caring 
 little about it—win it even though 
 sacrificing gain for principle. Moreover, 
 ‘men who have little interest in Christ- 
 ianity are finding it less and less easy to 
 pursue a policy of crude selfishness. For 
 the spirit of Christ has so far influenced 
 the world that selfishness dare not walk 
 
 2 17 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 abroad naked and unashamed. “ The 
 strong man,”’ says Mr. Studdert-Kennedy, 
 ‘is not what he was. That strange man 
 on the Cross worries him. He is uncom- 
 fortable about Christ. .... Christ is 
 making cowards of us all. We dare not 
 do wrong thoroughly.” But generally 
 speaking the distinction which Christ 
 makes is valid, and to be a successful man 
 of the world it needs the appropriate type 
 of character. 
 
 Just as much does the spiritual life 
 demand the spiritual man. If we are 
 to live in Christ’s Kingdom we must have 
 His quality. That is the point which 
 many people have missed as they study 
 the Sermon on the Mount; and that is 
 why the principles laid down there, 
 and the line of conduct suggested, appear 
 so hard to follow—even, to some, so 
 impossible. To fulfil them demands a 
 new kind of character, a fresh type of 
 /man. The key to success in Christ’s 
 _ world is a Christian personality. It is as 
 ' hopeless for a man to think that he can 
 
 18 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 set out to follow the precepts of Christ 
 without change of heart as that he could 
 start to climb Mount Everest without 
 previous preparation. For that expedi- 
 tion much had to be got ready in the way 
 of equipment, but the real essential 
 was in the quality of the men themselves. 
 So it is in the Kingdom of God. That 
 is where Jesus always began with people 
 —with themselves. When Nicodemus 
 came to Him seeking to know something 
 of His truth, Jesus told him that the first 
 thing he needed was not to know, or even 
 to do, but to become. When the rich 
 young ruler came to ask Him for guidance 
 as to what he might do to inherit eternal 
 life, Jesus bade him give up his wealth. 
 He did that, not because he thought that 
 wealth was evil, but because in this case 
 it was preventing a full surrender. When 
 the man came to Christ seeking decision 
 in a family dispute about property, 
 Jesus went straight for the man himself, 
 who valued rights more than fellowship, 
 and thought more of property than 
 
 7 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 brotherhood. For no such man will find 
 the right solution for his problem till he 
 himself is changed. If we think, we shall 
 see how reasonable this is. How, for 
 instance, can a man face the sacrifice 
 which love will demand till he has come 
 to look with Christ’s eyes on the material 
 things of life and, with His heart, to feel 
 for others? Before we can loose our 
 grip on the things that side-track us from 
 the way of Christ, or make it terribly 
 dificult to walk in, they must come to 
 lose their attraction for us. How can a 
 man fulfil the law of love to his enemy 
 except as he has come to lose all thought 
 of himself and his own hurt pride in a 
 real concern for his brother’s good ? 
 How can we cease from the struggle to 
 lay up treasure on earth—the struggle 
 that often makes life so bitter for ourselves 
 and others—except as we have come to 
 see that our real treasure is in the service 
 we can render to others, and our real 
 security is in the love of God? Half the 
 strain of Christianity comes from trying 
 
 20 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 to live the new life without possessing the 
 new spirit. The plant reared in the 
 tropics might as well be expected to live 
 in the climate of a northern summer! 
 That this new type of character is a 
 necessary requirement for the new life 
 becomes clearer as we study the Sermon 
 on the Mount and find out what it really 
 is. We have taken it for granted that it is 
 a set of cut-and-dried precepts and 
 regulations. But it is not that. None 
 of the things we take for rules is See 
 defined. “Love your enemies,” said 
 Jesus, but what does He mean by love? 
 Only the loving heart can tell. Till we 
 begin to love with the heart of Jesus, 
 the way of love in practical matters of 
 life is veiled in mist. ‘ Love only com- 
 prehendeth love.” Only the instinct of 
 love can suggest to us what in any set 
 of circumstances the way of love may be. 
 Even where Jesus seems to be definite, as 
 in the command to give to Him that asketh 
 or voluntarily to carry a load for two miles 
 when we are compelled to carry it for 
 
 2I 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 only one—a little reflection will show us 
 that He is only, in striking form, illus- 
 trating the working of a spirit by graphic 
 pictures illuminating a point of view. 
 The mere literalist misses the meaning. 
 Flashes are being thrown up to enable us 
 to see the country and the direction of 
 the road—not rules to lead us in a blind 
 obedience. ‘They suggest a spiritual art © 
 which only the man who has caught the 
 beat of its music will be able to practise. 
 ~ Christianity is a new atmosphere, and 
 it takes new men to live in it. The 
 climate of the country is impossible for 
 us till in our measure we are breathing 
 the air of the Spirit. Such new men are 
 the true answer to the question, ‘‘ What is 
 a Christian ?”? Not by what he thinks 
 or knows or does does Jesus define a 
 Christian man, as we often do; but, more 
 ~deeply, by what he ts. He is one who is 
 meek, and poor in spirit, and pure in 
 heart. He knows what it means to sorrow 
 as Christ sorrows. He is one whose love 
 to God and men is ever seeking to express 
 
 22 
 
Lhe Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 itself more perfectly in a right way of 
 life. His is the merciful heart, and in it 
 he carries God’s own peace, that he may 
 create peace in the world. His task is 
 to be a reconciler whose method is to 
 reconcile men to one another by recon- 
 ciling them in all their life to God. And 
 as a consequence, while the world is 
 what it is, he will meet with scorn and 
 hostility from people to whom, like his 
 Master, he will be a standing challenge 
 and rebuke. 
 
 There is a short story of Mr. Gals- 
 worthy’s in which the two types are well 
 illustrated in one phase of life. It was 
 in the war-days, when the best and 
 worst in men were revealed as faces are 
 lit up in the glare of a furnace flame. 
 One was the aggressive self-willed type 
 of the man of the world. A fierce hate 
 began to burn in his blood and he gave 
 his whole mind and energy to a campaign 
 for hunting out and interning people of 
 German blood. One after another he 
 pursued them remorselessly, and in that 
 
 23 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 passion old friendships were dissolved 
 and kindly ties burned up. ‘The result 
 of his success upon the man _ himself 
 was devastating. His whole nature was 
 poisoned, making one feel sorry for him, 
 “‘as for a dog that goes mad, does what 
 harm he can, and dies.” Among the 
 objects of his zeal was the son of a 
 former friend, a youth whose mother was 
 British, whom he had known from his 
 youth, and of whom there could have been 
 no suspicion. He succeeded in having the 
 boy taken from his mother and sent to 
 an internment camp. ‘There the youth ~ 
 fell ill, but recovered. And on his 
 recovery he sent his persecutor a letter 
 from the camp which ran as follows: “I 
 owe you a deep debt of gratitude for 
 having been at least partially the means 
 of giving me the most wonderful ex- 
 perience of my life. In that camp of 
 sorrow—where there was sickness of mind 
 such as I am sure you have never seen or 
 realized—of poor huddled creatures, 
 turning and turning on themselves year 
 
 24 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 after year—I learned to forget myself 
 and to do my little best for them. - And I 
 learned, and I hope I shall never forget it, 
 that goodwill towards his fellow-creatures 
 is all that stands between man and death 
 in life.” 
 
 But Jesus not only outlined this new | 
 type of manhood—He came to produce it. | 
 That explains why His method was always 
 to get alongside people. Mark tells us 
 that He chose twelve men “that they 
 might be with Him.” ‘That is the best 
 illustration of His habitual way of 
 working. He brought these men into 
 His company that He might make 
 them new men. His burning passion 
 was to make men—His own kind of men. 
 In some cases He had to remake them, 
 where sin and wrong thinking and the 
 conventions of a corrupt religion had 
 mishandled them: like a battered coin 
 whose image is defaced, they had to be. 
 reminted in the crucible of His friendship. 
 We can see the process going on in the 
 
 case of the disciples. ‘They are quite frank 
 25 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 about their first days in His friendship— 
 the blunders they made, their blindness, 
 their selfish ambitions, their hotheadedness. 
 How Peter had grown angry when Jesus 
 first spoke of the Cross, how they tried 
 to steal in front of their brethren in what 
 they conceived of rank in the Kingdom, 
 would have had Christ call down fire from 
 heaven upon the rude Samaritans, and 
 had even tried to drive the children away 
 from Him—it is all confessed, with the 
 grateful frankness of men who describe 
 “the horrible pit and the miry clay,” 
 when they know that their feet are on 
 the Rock. It must have humiliated them 
 to think over these days. They had been 
 altogether wrong, and all wrong together, 
 —wrong in their thinking, in their feeling, 
 in their outlook, in all their ideas of what 
 was worth while. But Jesus had changed 
 them. Fellowship with Him had wrought 
 something new in the very texture of 
 their nature. They felt themselves to 
 be a kind of new creation. It was not 
 done easily. It took Calvary to do it. 
 
 26 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 There were attachments that never 
 snapped till then. There was a blindness 
 that never lifted till the shock of that 
 experience tore away the veil and showed 
 them what sin is, what love is. ‘There was 
 a pride that never broke till then, and 
 they found how little, in their own 
 strength, they could at up to the de- 
 mands of love. But bit by bit we see 
 them becoming stronger, more steadfast 
 in loyalty, more loving, escaping from 
 themselves and dropping old prejudices, 
 till they were “‘ ready for all His perfect 
 Will.” How it happened we cannot tell. 
 It is not what He said merely. For 
 “Christianity cannot be taught ; it must 
 be caught.” It was Himself imparting 
 Himself. ‘ Beholding the glory of the 
 Lord, they were changed.” In that is 
 His divine secret. In a recent article a 
 writer describes how he first came to 
 find his way into the beauty of English 
 literature. One day his class in school 
 was groaning its way through grammar 
 and syntax, analysing a passage from 
 
 27 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 Milton, when the head master entered. 
 He looked at the boys for a moment, then 
 picked up a copy of the “‘ Paradise Lost ” 
 and began to read. ‘The class listened. 
 It was a revelation. “It was in that 
 moment, I know, that for me the door 
 opened into another world.” ‘The touch 
 of Jesus is like that. All great kingdoms 
 in life open to us through the contact 
 with personality. Mother, father, teacher, 
 friend, they are, all of them, doors into 
 some region of the Spirit. ‘Truth becomes 
 luminous for us again and again, only 
 when we are in touch with some one in 
 whose life it has become a flame of light 
 and fire. There are people in whose 
 presence the whole world becomes dark 
 with despair ; there are others who bring 
 us into an air in which doubt cannot live 
 and in which all good things become the 
 
 only realities. Not once, but again and 
 again, has a man gone to a radiant soul 
 for help in a moral situation, and found 
 that the questions he had intended to 
 ask fell silent on his lips, because in that 
 
 28 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 presence they did not seem worth putting, 
 
 or already had found their answer. The — 
 
 presence of Jesus is like that. He is “ the | 
 Door,” as He said. He lets us into the | 
 new world—the world where love is | 
 natural, where the things He values are | 
 the true riches, and His truth the breath | 
 
 of life. And He brings us into this world | 
 
 by changing us, quickening the spiritual 
 
 ee 
 
 sense, giving us new eyes and ears and a | 
 
 heart that beats with the love of God. 
 For, after all, the spiritual country 
 . where love and fellowship are the watch- 
 words, and the way of Jesus is the path 
 of life, is our native land. No man ever 
 yet came under the spell of Jesus without 
 feeling that he was a kind of exile return- 
 ing home. Before he came into it, he 
 might not have recognized that it was 
 home. But now he knows that all the 
 rest of his days he has been a kind of 
 wanderer, that at last he has come to 
 himself. Perhaps there is nothing we 
 need to learn so much in this our day as 
 that the way of life which Jesus revealed 
 
 29 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 isnatural. Christianity has suffered more 
 than we realize from people who have 
 represented it as something which cannot 
 be lived by a normal man without loss 
 of his ordinary human qualities. That 
 is not how Jesus puts it. He described 
 the first impulse of the prodigal, when he 
 came to himself, as the impulse to go home, 
 and the first cry of that moment of re- 
 turning common sense as one that shaped 
 
 itself into a prayer. It cannot be too. 
 
 much insisted upon that when Jesus 
 offered to men His way of life and laid 
 down the principles on which a Christian 
 man has to live, it was not that He had 
 come down with some high-flown doctrine 
 from another sphere as, say, a visitor from 
 Mars might come to earth to persuade 
 us to alter our life to one only fit for the 
 
 _ peculiar physical conditions of that planet. 
 |. He was revealing to men the real nature of 
 
 the universe in which they found them- 
 
 i 
 
 selves. He was showing on what lines it 
 
 | was planned to run, on what foundations 
 / alone we may safely build a human 
 
 30 
 
 ee eee 
 
The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 society, and on what terms alone we can 
 find the secret of life. Sin and selfish- 
 ness are not truly natural. They are 
 the corruption of our true nature. The 
 proof of it is that when men begin to live 
 like the beasts they become worse than 
 the beasts, when they adopt the ideas of 
 the jungle the world they create becomes 
 the worst of all jungles. And fear and 
 greed and self-interest, the motives we 
 use because we think they are the springs 
 of power, are, to Jesus, just so much grit 
 flung into a piece of delicate machinery. 
 From this it follows that the only blessed- 
 ness is the inward attitude to God and 
 man by which we reach harmony within 
 ourselves and peace in His world. No 
 one can look around to-day and study 
 current problems in the light of Jesus 
 without becoming convinced that He 
 alone can put into our hands the key to 
 any progress that dare be called by that 
 name. For He holds it. He alone can 
 point the way to a better world. He 
 alene can make the men who can make 
 
 31 é 
 
eres 
 
 The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 all things new. Humanity on all sides is 
 striving after conditions having a truer 
 relation to that value of personality, 
 which it has begun to realize through Him. 
 But has it caught a real glimpse of this 
 deeper need which He unveils—the need 
 of the new personality for the new world ? 
 There is no true advance in civilization 
 other than that which in material con- 
 ditions and human relationships, in home 
 and industry, in national and international 
 life, will show the spirit of the Kingdom. 
 But only the men of the Kingdom—the 
 men whom Jesus can make—are fitted to 
 make that advance. And all efforts to 
 change things which are not in their 
 beginning and their end, also an effort 
 to change men, is but a striving to no 
 purpose. 
 
 It is only as we are qualified by His 
 Spirit to enter the Kingdom of Heaven 
 that we can truly enter and possess the 
 kingdom of earth. We have often held 
 these realms apart, as if the choice that 
 
 faces a man were between the earth and ~ 
 
 32 
 
 5 
 
 i 
 ; 
 FI 
 

 
 
 
 The Nature of a Christian Man 
 
 its satisfactions on the one hand, and, 
 on the other, heaven with its order of 
 blessedness. But in reality these are 
 not two but one. For “ earth’s crammed 
 with heaven,” and till we have realized 
 it, and have reached, even here, the 
 spiritual country, we are only feeding 
 upon illusion. There is but one way of 
 life through which we can find the 
 meaning of the world and rightly use 
 it. And only Jesus can lead us into it. 
 Even the gates of earth are closed to a 
 man who has not found in Him the key 
 to the Kingdom of Heaven, for “all 
 things are ours ” only in the measure in 
 which “we are Christ’s.’ The true 
 citizen of the world that now is, is the 
 Christlike man. 
 
1 aan 
 
 Nea eh \. 
 
 
 
Cuapter II 
 
 THE POOR IN SPIRIT 
 

 
II. The Poor in Spirit <2 a 
 
 “ Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs 
 is the Kingdom of Heaven.” 
 
 Sone of the things in life that are 
 most difficult to understand are most 
 worth understanding. That is often 
 true of the words of Jesus; those with 
 the hardest shell to break have the sweetest 
 kernel. In this case the difficulty is 
 to know what Christ meant by being poor 
 in spirit. That is a hard thing for the 
 man to understand who has not been 
 there, but it is well worth taking the 
 trouble to understand. For this con-' 
 dition is the main key to the Kingdom 
 of God. It is the attitude before which 
 the gate of the spiritual life swings open 
 to let us in. 
 
 There are two versions of the beatitude 
 —this one of Matthew and the other of 
 Luke. Luke cuts it down to the simple 
 
 37 
 
The Key to the Kingdom , 
 
 phrase “‘ Blessed are ye poor,” an abridg- 
 ment generally explained by his social 
 sympathies. There is no doubt that 
 Christ may often have used the shortened 
 / phrase. But He could hardly have meant 
 \ to have set it down as a principle that 
 ‘poverty is in itself a blessing, or that only 
 ' the poor can possess the Kingdom. None 
 knew better than He how debasing poverty 
 can be when it has gone beyond a certain 
 limit. There is a poverty that makes a 
 man into a kind of animal, and turns 
 life into a struggle for existence in which 
 every fine thing is next door to impossible. 
 And Jesus knew it. His picture of 
 Lazarus at the rich man’s gate is too vivid 
 a condemnation of life’s ghastly in- 
 equalities for us to believe that Jesus 
 gave His blessing to poverty as such. He 
 would have been the last to fling a text 
 to a starving man, and comfort him with 
 the suggestion of spiritual riches. What 
 He must have meant was that poverty 
 need be no bar to a deep and genuine 
 happiness ; and that, in point of fact, 
 
 38 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 there are hundreds of people who are 
 missing happiness by the very abundance 
 of the things in which they seek to find it. 
 As Jesus looked at the world, it was the 
 peril of wealth of which He was most con- 
 scious. His message has a constant under- 
 tone of warning that, of all the gifts that 
 come to men, wealth is perhaps the most 
 difficult to handle and to subdue to the 
 uses of the spirit. The only success of 
 life is to be the master of your world 
 for life’s spiritual ends; and whether a 
 man be rich or poor, the only way to a 
 real joy and satisfaction is to be delivered 
 from the illusions of wealth and the lure 
 of outward prosperity. Many of those 
 whose lives have been richest in the things 
 that count have been reduced to the 
 barest simplicities; and have therein 
 found freedom from the things which 
 in other lives become a tyranny. The 
 sweetest waters of human joy have some- 
 times broken out from these bare lives 
 like springs from a rock. When William 
 Burns, one of the first missionaries to 
 
 39 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 China, died, and the box containing his 
 belongings was opened in front of a little 
 group of Chinese, they found he had 
 literally nothing but a few odds and ends. 
 And one of the group said in an awe- 
 stricken voice, ‘‘ He must have been very 
 poor.” Yet he had made many rich, and 
 that kind of influence, according to Jesus, 
 is the true wealth. His treasure had little 
 of the gilt of earth about it, but it was 
 the true gold of the spirit. 
 
 But, in general, while all this is true, 
 we cannot doubt that Matthew’s version 
 is closer than Luke’s to the mind of Jesus. 
 He was never one to extol an external 
 circumstance in itself. Whether a con- 
 dition is blest or not depends on how we 
 take it. What kind of personality do 
 we reveal in it? What kind of man do 
 we suffer it to make us? Poverty may 
 harden as well as riches, if we refuse to 
 seek God in it. A lowly place may be 
 filled with the hissing tongues of envy and 
 jealousy, instead of the whispering voices 
 of God’s love. It is the spirit within the 
 
 40 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 circumstance that is the reality. What- 
 ever our condition, 
 
 The heart’s aye the pairt aye 
 That makes us richt or wrang. 
 
 It is what we are behind those locked 
 doors where the soul keeps its secret 
 that makes us rich or poor. And we may 
 take this version as the truer to the 
 Master’s message, ‘“ Blessed are the poor 
 in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of 
 Heaven.” 
 
 What does He mean then by “ the poor 
 in spirit.” We can be sure He does not 
 mean the poor-spirited. That is the 
 usual sense of the phrase. We think of 
 someone helpless and dejected in the face 
 of life. He cannot hold up his head 
 against adversity. He will not resent an 
 insult, not because he refuses to see it, 
 but because he has not spirit enough to 
 hit back. The food of his mind is his 
 own self-pity, and there is no form of 
 selfishness more unattractive. You find 
 
 41 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 nothing of that sort of person about Paul, 
 or John, or Peter. None have ever stood 
 up to the world more bravely than they ; 
 for they knew that all the time, in spite 
 of all its pride and cruelty, it was really 
 helpless to do them hurt. Yet they were 
 among the poor in spirit. What, then, 
 did Jesus mean ? 
 
 The best translation of the phrase 
 is in what Jesus calls “‘ humility.” The 
 poor in spirit are the humble-hearted. 
 It is the condition in which a man is not 
 concerned with his own attainments, 
 his own knowledge, his own virtues, 
 his own merits, his own goodness. If you 
 were to ask him about them he would 
 tell you that they are nothing, and he 
 would mean it. To put it in another 
 way : to be poor in spirit is the opposite 
 of all that is summed up in the word 
 pride, that assertion of self in its most 
 subtle and poisonous form. Read through 
 the Gospels and you will find that the 
 thing Christ was out against in all His 
 work was pride. The world has got very 
 
 42 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 far away in its moral standards from the 
 emphasis of Jesus. The Church has 
 largely followed suit. Our scale of virtues 
 and of vices has been too largely framed 
 by the external needs of society. It is 
 plain enough that a thief is the foe of 
 society, and we have therefore no quarter 
 for the man who steals. We condemn 
 the breaking of the eighth commandment 
 because we realize how dangerous all 
 moral laxity is to the very life of society.. 
 The standpoint of Jesus is miles ahead of 
 all this. His insight goes fathoms deeper 
 into the roots of moral disaster. He 
 gave the first place in destructive power, 
 to pride in all its various forms. And all 
 the masters of the spiritual life who have 
 learned to look with his eyes, have sup- 
 ported Him. Dante has his list of the 
 seven deadly sins, as they are called, and 
 pride is at the head of them all. There- 
 fore the proud occupy the lowest region 
 of purgatory. As the poet enters into 
 that lowest circle he hears them uttering 
 the Lord’s Prayer, and there is no prayer 
 
 43 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 more humbling to a proud heart. As he 
 walks he finds his feet treading a marble 
 pavement engraved with the memorials 
 of the illustrious proud who have learnt 
 humility and so have escaped from pur- 
 gatory. And as he leaves the place, by 
 the steep stairway, his heart is cheered 
 and comforted by the voice of one who 
 sings this first beatitude, “* Blessed are the 
 poor in spirit. ” 
 
 The “ poor in spirit,” then, are those in 
 whom pride in all its forms is slain. And — 
 pride has many forms. One of them is 
 the pride of possession—the pride of gifts - 
 that come by nature or by Providence. 
 This is a form of pride which is easy enough 
 to overcome, if only we will look into the 
 real situation. What is there to be proud 
 of in that which is a gift? Why should 
 it make a man hold up his head and feel 
 himself superior to others because nature 
 has given him either a comely form, or a © 
 richly talented mind, or, least of all, © 
 a larger share than others of material good. 
 It is strange that anyone Should think 
 
 44 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 himself somewhat because he has attached 
 to his name a bit of land; or a balance 
 at the bank; or even because he finds 
 that there are things he can do or produce 
 more skilfully than others. It is one 
 thing to take pleasure in our gifts; it is 
 another thing to find in them the occasion 
 of pride, which is to attach to ourselves, 
 who merely receive, the glory of the 
 God who gives; and to use the things 
 that should humble us in lowly gratitude 
 to buttress self upon the throne. The 
 message of Jesus is humbling enough. 
 The true way to spell privilege is to call 
 it responsibility. The right way to de- 
 cipher the meaning of a gift is to see in 
 it a burden and a call. We are stewards 
 of all we have received, and the only man 
 who can rightly use his gifts is he who is 
 humbled before the feet of God by the 
 weight of the task they bring. 
 
 But there are other forms of pride more 
 difficult to detect or to condemn.’ There 
 is pride of knowledge, pride of achieve- 
 ment, pride of character, pride of goodness. 
 
 45 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 That is where the foe gets most of 
 us. It is in such things as these which 
 we, or others, set to our credit that the 
 enemy is most deeply entrenched. Look- 
 ing superficially, it is difficult to see where 
 pride of this kind is wrong. If we have 
 fought our way against long odds, why 
 should we not be proud of it? If we 
 have laid low some temptation before 
 which we might have gone down, why 
 should we not rejoice in it and claim 
 the right of self-congratulation? One 
 ‘reason is that all pride isolates us from 
 
 others. That was Dante’s reason for 
 
 putting pride at the head of his list. It 
 was because, more than all other vices, 
 it consists in a defect of love. It is the 
 
 isolating thing. It spoils fellowship, and 
 sets a gulf between us and our neighbours 
 
 across which love cannot pass. It 
 
 turns even our efforts to help others | 
 
 into the patronage that stings and wounds. 
 But the other reason is that it is not a 
 true estimate of our value. The idol of 
 
 self-esteem which pride fashions has feet 
 
 46 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 of clay. It is a curious thing that all 
 true knowledge humbles a man into a 
 sense of how little he knows. The true 
 scientist is not impressed with his own 
 discovery. He is impressed with what 
 his discovery reveals—glimpses and hints 
 of an ocean of truth that is without bottom 
 as it is without shore. Did not Socrates, 
 the wisest man of his age, provoke his 
 fellows to slay him by telling them that 
 all he could do was to reveal to them how 
 little he and they knew. The man who 
 has done great things is always humble 
 in the measure in which he is really great, 
 for his true greatness is in his overwhelm- 
 ing sense of how much there is still to do. 
 And so it is also in the sphere of goodness. 
 The finer a man’s spirit the greater is 
 his insight into goodness, and the more 
 his own virtues pale into insignificance 
 before it. The true saints are always 
 humble, because their sainthood consists 
 in their vision of God, within Whose 
 light their own goodness is but shadow. 
 After all, what have we, even of such 
 
 47 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 frail rags of virtue as cover our nakedness, — 
 that we did not receive ? No man can 
 read what the modern experts have to say 
 about the criminal mind, or track out 
 the secret of some man’s failure, without 
 being himself broken in humility before 
 the sense of a grace that has somehow 
 stretched forth a loving hand to him— 
 the same Hand that Bunyan’s pilgrim 
 in the Slough of Despond found mysteri- 
 ously held out to lift him to his feet. 
 “There go I, but for the grace of God,” 
 is an old-fashioned saying, but it springs 
 spontaneously to the lips whenever we 
 look at someone who has fallen. For we 
 know, when we are honest, that the same 
 dark thing is in ourselves. Why is it, 
 when we look at the scene on Calvary, 
 that we do not blast with our indignation © 
 the men who crucified Jesus? It is 
 because we know that the same dark 
 possibilities are in our own nature— 
 that “ weak self-love and guilty pride.” 
 When we turn our eyes to the Crucified, 
 a light falls on us which makes us, with 
 
 48 
 
The Poor in Spirtt 
 
 all our boasted goodness, one with His 
 murderers. There is somewhere a fan- 
 tastic story of a painter who had the gift 
 of painting his subjects, not as they 
 appeared to the world or to themselves, 
 but as they were at heart. The result 
 was disastrous. Who is there who would 
 submit himself willingly to such an 
 artist ? ‘That, in point of fact, is why men 
 flee from Christ, for in contact with Him 
 we see ourselves as we are, and see nothing 
 for self-admiration, nothing for vain- 
 glory, nothing for pride. You remember 
 Guinevere’s song, when at last the veil 
 had fallen from her eyes, while she looked 
 out on the snowclad, moonlit land : 
 
 As these white robes are soiled and dark 
 To yonder virgin ground, 
 As this pale taper’s earthly spark 
 To yonder argent round— ~ 
 So shows my soul before the Lamb, 
 My spirit before Thee. 
 
 Read the “* Confessions of St. Augustine ” 
 and you will see what it means to be 
 
 49 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 poor in spirit. Look through the prayers 
 of the saints as you find them collected 
 in some volume. Right down the ages 
 runs the undertone of penitence and 
 humility : “ Strengthen our weakness and 
 defend us from the treachery of our un- 
 faithful hearts”; “I fling myself, with 
 all my misery and weakness, into Thine 
 ever open arms.” So again and again 
 run the litanies of the saints, and as you 
 look at their names you see there men 
 whose lives were aglow with a radiance 
 that lights the face of history. ‘These 
 are the poor in spirit, who have thereby 
 the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 To be poor in spirit means to see our- 
 — selves as we are in the light of reality— 
 —the light of God, and so to be conscious 
 of nothing except our need of His love 
 and forgiveness. All the shelters are 
 down. ‘There is nothing in us big enough 
 to hide the soul from that light that 
 searches us through and through. Nothing 
 that we have is our own except the feeble 
 will to be better than we are, and the 
 
 50 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 desire to be what God would make us 
 The man who is poor in spirit does not 
 seek to justify himself, or to hold up his 
 own good deeds for a screen against the 
 judgment of love. He has given up the 
 effort. He is facing himself and he knows 
 he has nothing to say except ‘‘ God be 
 merciful to me a sinner.” Even as to his 
 future improvement he has no security 
 in himself. Some people would like to 
 have the demand of Christ upon us put 
 into a bundle of little regulations and 
 precepts. They have a feeling that they 
 can keep them, and so maintain their own 
 self-respect. That was what the Phari- 
 sees were really seeking. They hated 
 Christ because He swept away all their 
 petty commandments in a love which 
 asked so much that it condemned them 
 at every point, and made for ever impos- 
 ‘sible a virtuous pride in their own self- 
 made goodness. But the man who 1s 
 poor in spirit knows that the infinite 
 demand of love is for ever beyond him. 
 As he stands in the light of Christ, he 
 
 51 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 knows he cannot reach any perfection 
 that will satisfy his pride, and self becomes 
 utterly dethroned. It was of this con- 
 dition of need and dependence that Jesus 
 said, “‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit.” 
 How does that blessedness come ? 
 For one thing, it is the blessedness of 
 touching rock bottom. ‘There is a peace. 
 in just letting go./ Many people find 
 the spiritual life a perpetual strain. It 
 is because they have what they call 
 an ideal, a fancied perfection to which 
 they must attain. ‘They see some virtue 
 which they want to reach, so they strive 
 for it by climbing, sometimes on hands 
 and knees; and all the time it is just 
 an effort of pride, though they may 
 not know it. They are occupied in 
 keeping up appearances, if only to them- 
 selves. All this effort is vain. ‘* Which 
 of you, by taking thought,” says Jesus, 
 ‘can add one cubit to his stature? 
 Consider the lilies, how they grow; they 
 toil not, neither do they spin.” And 
 He is speaking of more than the care for 
 
 52 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 earthly things: He is speaking of the 
 care for character, of the strain after 
 virtue which may be far more devastating 
 than the worry about bread. And He 
 condemned them both. How uneasy is 
 the platform of our own merits and good 
 deeds! What a frail screen is our reputa- 
 tion! How many people are like a sailor 
 facing wind and storm in a leaky boat, 
 which all the time he has to be patching 
 or baling out! ‘That is the position of 
 a man who will not accept himself as he 
 is and face the things which the light 
 condemns. But what a new peace comes 
 into the heart when we just let go! Mr. 
 Galsworthy, in one of his short stories, 
 tells of two men who met together and 
 compared notes of their experiences. 
 One was blind; but he describes how it 
 had brought him a kind of peace. It was 
 the last misfortune. “It gives you a 
 feelin’ of bein’ insured like.” ‘The other 
 had been in prison, and respectable 
 society had made him an outcast. But 
 he, also, had found, even in that experience 
 
 53 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 a kind of peace. He was no longer under 
 the tyranny of its conventions and need 
 no longer be the slave of the bubble 
 reputation. His face had the smile of 
 a man who has found a new security. 
 The blindman asked leave to pass his 
 fingers jover ‘it. Yes,’? he said, iaevie 
 felt the lines of its confidence, ‘* same 
 with you—touched bottom.” ‘There is 
 always a peace in being set free from fears 
 and false standards, whatever does it. 
 There is a relief in letting go. But only 
 the man who has seen Jesus and finds his 
 pride so shattered that he has nothing else 
 to trust to but Christ, finds the real rock 
 which is the foundation that cannot be 
 moved. 
 
 For when we let go, there dawns the 
 blessed fact that we are God’s children, 
 that we have His love, not as merit but as 
 sheer gift, and all we have to do is to 
 respond to the leading of that love in daily 
 life—not to struggle vainly after a fancied 
 perfection. ‘This brings deliverance from 
 all fear of the light, from all bondage to 
 
 54 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 the world’s praise or blame, from all 
 pretence to ourselves that we are better 
 than we are. It is to fall into the arms 
 of a Love who tells us the very worst, 
 and yet gives us His fellowship through 
 everything, to change and redeem us. 
 Only the man who gets down to that 
 position can see the amazing wonder of 
 the grace of God. Forgiveness is a gift, 
 or it is nothing. When a man is there, 
 taking into his hands—hands emptied 
 of all his good deeds—the love he knows 
 he can never merit and yet need never 
 lose, he is in the place where nothing can 
 break his peace or steal his joy. And that 
 is blessedness. 
 
 And he is in the place of great achieve- 
 ments, though he may not be conscious 
 of them. For it is the place where that 
 faith awakens which sees God’s will in 
 circumstances and seeks to obey it, and 
 where love to others starts in a new 
 passion and a kindled interest which makes 
 service not a duty but a joy. It is the 
 place where the power of God is released 
 
 aD 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 and the love of God is set free through 
 
 us, to translate itself into deeds of influence 
 of which we are all the time unconscious, 
 yet all the time assured, because it is all of 
 God, with whom there is no failure. And 
 that assurance is blessedness. 
 
 Do not let us mistake this quality. 
 Humblemindedness is not a craven thing. 
 There are no such brave workers and 
 fighters for truth and right as those who 
 know that the power is not of themselves 
 but of God. It is no mere depreciation 
 of our gifts. Who can so enjoy his gifts 
 and use them to the full as he who knows 
 they come from God? A man may 
 have wealth and honour and_ success 
 beyond the dreams of ambition, and know 
 it, and yet be poor in spirit. And above 
 all, there is nothing of sadness about this 
 poverty of spirit, as Jesus tellsus. For our 
 pride is broken and it is through our pride 
 that life can most deeply wound us and 
 rob us of our gaiety and joy. 
 
 It is good to read again Bunyan’s 
 description of the Valley of Humiliation. 
 
 56 
 
The Poor in Spirit 
 
 This does not sound a very attractive 
 place, and the descent into it is dangerous 
 and may be very bitter. It was there 
 that Christian met Apollyon and had to 
 do battle for his life. The spot was called 
 Forgetful Green, as Greatheart afterwards 
 explains “ because he had forgotten what 
 favours he had received and how unworthy 
 he was of them.” And he was only saved 
 when he was beaten to his knees so that he 
 despaired of life. But when once a man 
 has got rid of his pride in utter dependence 
 on God, the valley is a beautiful place. 
 “It is the best and most fruitful place in all 
 these parts,” says the Guide. “Behold 
 how green this Valley is and how beautiful 
 with Lilies. In this Valley our Lord for- 
 merly had His Country house. He loved 
 to walk in these meadows, for He found 
 the Air was pleasant. Men have met with 
 Angels here, have found Pearls here, and 
 have in this place found the words of 
 Life.” Then, as they went, they heard 
 the sound of music. It was no hectic 
 music this, but the song of a boy’s heart, 
 
 57 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 happy and carefree. It came from a 
 shepherd lad, a merry soul, who carried in 
 his bosom the herb called Heart’s Ease, 
 and this is what he sang: 
 ...He that is down, needs fear no Fall 
 He that is low, no Pride: 
 He that is humble, ever shall 
 Have God to be his Guide. 
 
 The man who knows the music of that 
 
 song has found the secret of the Kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 58 
 
Cuapter III 
 
 THEY THAT MOURN 
 

 
LIT. They That Mourn o > 
 
 “ Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall 
 be comforted.” 
 
 li? is a very hard saying to take even 
 from the lips of Christ. There are 
 those indeed, who make a luxury of grief. 
 Their favourite indulgence is self-pity. 
 They take every chance they can of 
 Tecounting their woes, till, with all our 
 charity, we cannot help feeling that they 
 enjoy it. It is indeed one of the tempta- 
 tions of the self-centred mind to shut 
 itself up with grief as in a prison and never 
 let the glad world chase away the shadows 
 with a smile. We can be quite sure 
 Christ was not referring to that kind of 
 person when he said, “ Blessed are they 
 that mourn.” 
 To whom then did He refer? Most 
 people find it very hard to accept their 
 sorrows—even to admit the right of 
 
 61 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 sorrow to enter their world at all. To 
 the average man sorrow appears as sheer 
 tragedy, unlit, save for those who have 
 faith enough, by the faintest rainbow of 
 hope. They find nothing in its dark 
 heart for which to give God thanks or 
 make them feel it was worth while to be 
 led by that desolate road. If there is any 
 comfort or blessedness in sorrow it is, for 
 such, postponed to a distant future. 
 They hope only to catch “the far-off 
 interest of tears.” | 
 
 That is about as far as most people get. 
 The passages of Scripture in which 
 sorrowing people find comfort are those 
 which tell of the end of sorrow: “ There 
 shall be no more death, neither sorrow, 
 nor crying, neither shall there be any 
 more pain; for the former things are 
 passed away.”’ 
 
 The ancient Saxons used to set their 
 burying grounds on a hill-top whence 
 they could look upon the sea in the 
 distance ; for the sea spoke of the great 
 beyond from which they had come, and 
 
 62 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 of the far-off home to which they re- 
 turned. And for most of us as we stand 
 by the grave of someone who has gone— 
 our commonest experience of sorrow— 
 the one thing that comforts us is the faint, 
 far-off light of home, seen with the eye of 
 faith. 
 
 Now, of course, Christ would not have 
 excluded this comfort of hope. It is 
 Indeed part of the blessedness. In my 
 Father’s house are many mansions; if 
 it were not so, I would have told you.” 
 But this word has something deeper. It 
 Is the greatest mistake to imagine that 
 Christianity has no victory in this life— 
 merely a hope for the afterward. That 
 were to turn this world, for many people, 
 into a dull and empty corridor with a shut 
 door at the end of it. The victory of 
 Jesus and the message of the gospel is the 
 power to see this world, with all it holds, 
 as our Father’s house. Christianity is 
 an alchemy of the spirit, whereby the 
 hard and bitter stuff of experience is 
 changed, here and now, into the very 
 
 63 | 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 nourishment of the soul. Christ has 
 come to put into our hands a key to life’s 
 experience, by which, in the darkest 
 thunder-cloud, may be read the message, 
 “ God is love.” ‘ There are various kinds 
 of sorrow in life, various causes of mourn- 
 ing. There is that which comes from 
 sin, and that which comes from disap- 
 pointment, and, commonest of all, the 
 sorrow that comes through death. But 
 for all there is comfort, and here and now. 
 It is part of the secret of the Christian 
 spirit that it introduces us into a world 
 in which we can find a blessedness in 
 mourning. 
 
 First of all, there is a message here for 
 those whose sorrows come from their 
 own private trouble—the blow they . 
 cannot escape. That is how sorrow 
 generally meets us. At first we think 
 only of its bitterness and pain. That 
 takes up all our mind, and it is difficult 
 to see anything at all except the blinding 
 mist that fills the air and shuts out 
 everything else. But even in this, if we 
 
 64 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 reflect on it, is there not something to be 
 grateful for in the very fact that we are 
 capable of mourning ? The saddest thing ~ 
 in all God’s world is not a soul that } 
 sorrows: it is a heart so dull that it is 
 incapable of feeling grief at all; a heart 
 so selfish, that nothing but what touches 
 its comfort and its ease could move it to 
 a twinge of feeling. For to sorrow means 
 to love. Mourning is indeed but another, 
 and a deeper, side of loving. It is affec- 
 tion turned to pain, but it is affection 
 none the less. Are there not those who 
 have discovered for the first time, in 
 sorrow, how deeply they loved? The 
 hour of grief was the hour when love 
 awoke from being a mere commonplace 
 of feeling to become a passionate posses- 
 sion of the soul. They did not realize 
 how deeply they loved till one they loved 
 was taken. Then the hidden fountains 
 whose waters had been trickling almost 
 unheeded through their life for years, 
 broke the silence with their music; and 
 as they thought of it they knew that this 
 
 5 65 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 sorrow was blessed, and in the wild agony 
 of regret they possessed the riches of their 
 love. “I think,” says a_ well-known 
 writer, who has unveiled for us his own 
 wounded heart, “‘ that those who have 
 |e to bear sorrow will agree with me 
 that bereavement is the deepest initia- 
 tion into the mystery of human life, an 
 initiation more searching and profound 
 than even happy love. Love remem- 
 bered and consecrated by grief belongs, 
 more clearly than the happy intercourse 
 of friends, to the eternal world. It 
 has proved itself stronger than death.” 
 But there is a wider range of blessedness. 
 There is, for instance, the world of human 
 sympathy. Other hands touch ours whose © 
 tenderness we have never felt before. 
 Other people in whom we had seen 
 nothing are revealed as fellow-sufferers, 
 bearing the mark of pain, and we are 
 linked with them in this companionship. 
 There are people whose prosperity shuts 
 them up in a proud isolation. They 
 know others suffer, but it means nothing 
 
 66 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 to them. They thank God, when they 
 think of it, that such is not their lot, and 
 pass on. But when they begin to suffer 
 they begin to understand. The circle 
 which closed them in has been rudely 
 broken to let in a great human fellow- 
 ship. The world which was so very 
 empty, holding no one but themselves, 
 begins to fill with friends. And in that 
 friendship there is blessedness—a blessed- 
 ness which is comforting. 
 
 But there is still another kind of 
 revelation. Yet another world begins 
 to break into view. How many people 
 are there who never thought of heaven 
 till someone died. So long as they were 
 prosperous, and life smiled, they were 
 content. They had no need of another 
 world and they had no eyes for it, for it 
 takes need to give us the eyes. Then come 
 the sorrow and the crashing blow. It 
 may be failure or disappointment, it 
 may be death : and the world is seen as a 
 dark prison. But it has not suddenly 
 become a dark prison. It has been a prison 
 
 67 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 all the time, though they did not know it. 
 They have only begun to see it so. And 
 then if they wait, and do not batter out 
 their broken hearts against the impene- 
 trable walls, windows will open—the 
 windows that give out on eternity, through 
 which a richer, fairer world will break 
 into view. How many have had this 
 experience in these last tragic years! 
 Witness the clamant interest in immor- 
 tality which has awakened in a multitude 
 of people, and the panic rush to spiritual- 
 ism to give assurance to it. How many 
 people to-day can sing of “ Jerusalem the 
 Golden,” for whom ten years ago it was 
 only a bit of tapestry of pious imagina- 
 tion! One of our minor poets describes 
 the process of this change. An Easter 
 day came to a man and stirred only a 
 question, “Can the dead rise?”? He 
 doubted, and with a doubt that had no 
 fear in it, for he did not care. The next 
 Easter day his boy was gone to the war, 
 and he doubted still; but in his doubt 
 there was a fear lest a future life should 
 
 68 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 not be true. But the third Easter the 
 worst had happened, and now the doubt 
 had gone; and in its place there was a 
 fierce and passionate certainty which 
 broke into a prayer: 
 
 ** T cannot let him die, 
 Keep him for me, O Lord.” 
 
 The walls were broken through and the 
 mist had gone. A vision had opened of 
 another world than this, and in that 
 vision there was blessedness, and in that 
 blessedness comfort. ‘This comfort, too, 
 is deeper than at first appears; for the 
 vision of another world is more than the 
 comfort of a hope. It is the assurance 
 of something deeper. It is the discovery 
 that the universe is not material, but 
 spiritual. ‘The things that seemed real 
 are real no more. ‘The tinsel has faded 
 from life’s pride and possession. Its 
 ease and comfort are nothing but a 
 shadow. By and by, if he holds on, the 
 man who has gone thus far, will come to 
 
 69 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 see in Jesus a deeper view of life—that 
 its true end is not in these things, not 
 even in the peace of the untroubled heart, 
 but in love and service; and the sorrow 
 through which we feel this, and the 
 suffering through which we are shaken 
 out of our selfishness and out of our 
 blindness and come to see the loving face of 
 God the Father, are blessed. As a 
 writer says, the sweetest experiences of 
 life are like the honey in the heart of the 
 flower, which the bee must press into to 
 find. They come only through exper- 
 jences which, at first, strain and repel. 
 Wherefore let us face our griefs and dis- 
 appointments so as to reap their joy. 
 
 Who is the angel that cometh ? 
 Pain ! 
 Let us arise and go forth to greet him, 
 Not in vain 
 Is the summons come for us to meet him ‘ 
 He will stay and darken our sun. 
 He will stay 
 A desolate night, a weary day. 
 
 7O 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 Since in his shadow our work is done, 
 And in that shadow our crowns are won, 
 Let us say still, while his bitter chalice 
 Slowly into our hearts is poured, 
 ** Blessed is he that cometh 
 
 In the Name of the Lord.” 
 
 But in this beatitude Christ must mean 
 something else than our own private 
 sorrow or disappointment. For though 
 He was speaking to the need of a great 
 multitude, there are always some who 
 have few great sorrows of their own. For 
 one reason or another the angel passes 
 by their door Is there no word here for 
 them—nothing in their experience to 
 which Christ can appeal? That were 
 to suggest that the gospel of God’s grace 
 is dependent on some stroke of circum- 
 stance to enable it to find its mark. 
 
 There is, however, a nobler sorrow, 
 a finer grief, than even our private 
 sorrow, however graciously the latter be 
 borne. ‘There is the sorrow we can take 
 upon ourselves, the sorrow of the mind 
 
 ay 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 which is occupied not with its own griefs, 
 but with the suffering and sin of others. 
 Christ is speaking here, not merely to those 
 whom life has stricken, but to men and 
 women who for His sake will refuse to 
 keep their hearts in any shielded place, 
 and in the name of love will go out in 
 sympathy with others, to share their sorrow 
 and to bear their sins. The burden 
 which a Christian man carries is not first 
 of all a burden on the shoulders—of 
 labour and sacrifice. It is a burden upon 
 the mind—to think out the source of 
 others’ trouble and its remedy. It is a 
 burden on the conscience—to know no 
 peace while others live in a misery that 
 we might help to cure. It is a burden 
 on the heart which weighs it down and 
 sets there—though only God’s eye may 
 see 1t—the imprint of a Cross. It is in 
 that voluntary sorrow that the power of 
 real service takes its rise. Till there is 
 that flow of sympathy in which our lives 
 mingle with those we are seeking to help, 
 the material help we give carries nothing 
 
 72 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 but a mechanical power to ease a difficult 
 situation. It does nothing to help the 
 man. Do we think ourselves into the 
 situation of others? Are we as deeply 
 concerned with their pain as if it were 
 our own? Do we feel the stab of their 
 shame and sin as if we ourselves had been 
 found out in some dark dishonour? To 
 do that is the secret of saving power. It 
 is one thing to be indignant with the 
 sin of another ; it is another thing to feel 
 the shame of it, as if in it we ourselves 
 had some part and lot. It is one thing 
 to stand apart and be righteously angry ; 
 it is a different thing when the sin of 
 others wounds us to the quick, and we 
 feel with them the pain of moral dis- 
 grace. ‘Till society comes to feel shame 
 like that when it reads its newspaper in 
 the morning, the sorrowful story of crime 
 and iniquity will do no more than add to 
 its self-righteousness ; and all the punish- 
 ment it can heap upon the sinner will 
 
 Sleatpiteneaaae 
 
 73 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 which has no Cross at the Shake it. 
 Christ had His outburst of moral wrath 
 and righteous anger. He could use the 
 scourge when it was needed, as we know 
 from His denunciation of the Pharisees. 
 But He Himself felt to the very root of 
 His great soul the sting of their selfish 
 pride, its dishonour, and its tragedy. 
 We cannot understand the real quality of 
 His indignation as He denounced the 
 Pharisees till we have placed it alongside 
 another picture and seen that the two 
 
 are one. It is the picture of His weeping 
 - over Jerusalem. “O Jerusalem, Jeru- 
 salem, thou that killest the prophets, 
 how often would I have gathered thy 
 children together, even as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under her wings, and ye 
 would not!” There were tears in His 
 anger. There was mourning in His 
 judgment. He felt their sin not as | 
 violence to Himself, but as an outrage 
 on the love of God, which is the essence 
 of all sin. 
 
 It is that kind of mourning to which 
 
 74 
 
 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 He calls us—the sorrow that comes from 
 our oneness with our brothers in their 
 suffering and their sin. This is the 
 secret of our power to help them—this 
 fellow-feeling in which we put ourselves 
 in their place and stand out from our own 
 sheltered isolation to face the wind and 
 tempest of their need. 
 
 And herein is the blessedness of mourn- 
 ing and the secret of its comforting. For 
 in sympathy such as this we come into 
 living touch with God and are one with 
 Him in His redeeming purpose and His 
 task. It is there we find fellowship with 
 God Himself. There, where the shadows 
 deepest lie, we discover the secret of 
 His presence; for the closest fellowship 
 with God is the fellowship of His suffer- 
 ings. And in that way of suffering sym- 
 pathy, and the service to which it leads, 
 we find the blessedness which is the very 
 joy of God. 
 
 In the first chapter of Timothy the 
 writer speaks of “the glorious gospel of 
 our blessed God.” ‘That word “ blessed” 
 
 75 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 is the same as this which Jesus uses, and it 
 has the same significance. It is the 
 glorious gospel of our happy God. That 
 is Paul’s description of God. He is the 
 happy God. And why is He Happy? 
 What is the root of that joy of His—the 
 joy of the Lord which becomes our 
 blessedness ? Read the New Testament 
 and you will find it in His redeeming 
 purpose, His suffering love. That is the 
 heart of the music which fills the heavens 
 and rings through the starry places. 
 God’s joy is in His task of travailing, 
 redeeming love—the task in which He is 
 one with His sinning world in its failure, 
 in its tears, its shame—to bring it into 
 the peace of a great saldvation. The 
 secret of our joy is there, in fellowship 
 with God in His redeeming purpose ; 
 not in our ease or prosperity, or IN a | 
 . selfish righteousness. And it is when we 
 come out of our selfishness and open our 
 | heart and mind to the needs and suffer- 
 ings of others that we reach that fellow- 
 ship, and find touch with this happy God. 
 
 76 
 
They That Mourn 
 
 There we break through to Him and find 
 the fountain of that: hidden fellowship, 
 and a kind of sorrow which becomes 
 serene, transfigured, enriching. 
 
 For him, the sorrows are the tension thrills of 
 that serene endeavour, 
 
 Which yields to God for ever and for ever, 
 The joy that is more ancient than the hills, 
 
 There are many people to-day whose 
 trouble is the unreality of religious 
 experience. They do not know God. 
 He is not realto them. Is not the reason 
 that they are not secking touch with 
 Him where He is to be found—at the 
 point where we go out of ourselves, and 
 bare our hearts to the throbbing need of 
 the world? God is not real, because 
 life is not earnest to the point of sacri- 
 ficial sympathy. If you stand on a plate 
 of glass you can hold in your hand the 
 most powertul of live electric wires and 
 it will not stir a hair of your head, for 
 you are protected from the contact with 
 
 77 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 earth which would give the electric 
 energy a channel through your body. 
 It is the very same with the great 
 Christian truths, which hold the live 
 current of love and power and joy. We 
 need to touch earth if we would know 
 their kindling power. If we stand on any 
 insulating place of self-excusing or self- 
 absorption, we can handle the most 
 terrific truth without even the mildest 
 sensation. Is not that the secret of a 
 great deal of religious unreality to-day ? 
 Are we opening our hearts to the burden 
 of the world, letting it challenge us, 
 question us, sting our conscience, quicken 
 our mind to find a solution? Are we 
 going out where Jesus is—without the | 
 camp, outside the sheltered walls, bearing 
 the reproach of a world gone wrong? 
 There stands the open gate to a vital» 
 experience of His fellowship. Only as 
 we become one with Him in His cross do 
 we become one with Him on His throne. 
 Only as we reach the point of His passion 
 do we reach the glory of His joy. 
 
 78 
 

 
 Cuapter IV 
 
 THE MEEK 
 
Nae 
 
 
 
IV. The Meek o o o 
 
 “ Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit 
 the earth.” 
 
 ing of the beatitudes. It not only 
 provokes our thought, but it awakens our 
 opposition. None of these great sayings 
 carries its meaning on its face, but this 
 especially hides its secret so deep that we 
 have to dig for it as for hid treasure. 
 When the average man reads a state- 
 ment like this he attacks it from two points 
 of view. To begin with, he will deny 
 that meekness is a blessed state. There 
 is No virtue which is so universally sus- 
 pected. The last thing the ordinary 
 man would like to be known for is the 
 quality of meekness. Most of us like to 
 think we are people of some spirit. We 
 believe in standing up for what we call 
 our rights, not in “ taking things lying 
 . 81 
 
 “THs is perhaps the most challeng- 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 down.” Meekness savours of something 
 bloodless and anzemic—it suggests a milk- 
 sop who will let the world trample on 
 him. ‘The average man will deny that 
 that is a virtue at all; or, if it is, then it is 
 not a virtue he has any desire to attain. 
 A missionary tells how he was trying to 
 instruct a Hindoo student in the beati- 
 tudes and in particular to explain the 
 blessing of meekness, when the Hindoo 
 retorted, “Sir, the Englishman may 
 inherit the earth; but if you called him 
 meek, he would be insulted.” 
 
 And the man of the world will join 
 issue with Christ in His claim that the 
 meek inherit the earth. On the face of 
 it, it seems to be denied by the facts — 
 of life. If you would win success, you 
 must assert yourself. The people who 
 get on, are those who fight for their own 
 hand and keep themselves well in the 
 lime-light. The world generally takes 
 a man at his own valuation. A sensitive 
 and gentle spirit is the worst equipment 
 for the battle of life, where the prizes are 
 
 82 
 
The Meek 
 
 to the swift and the victory to the strong. 
 The great art of getting on is the art of 
 self-advertisement. So runs the common 
 creed of the world. In the philosophy 
 which was popular in certain quarters 
 before the war, we find this beatitude 
 frankly controverted. “Ye have heard 
 that it hath been said by them of old 
 time, ‘ Blessed are the meek, for they 
 shall inherit the earth,’ but I say unto 
 you * Blessed are the valiant for they shall 
 make the earth their throne.’ ” Such is 
 the creed of the market-place and of the 
 battlefield. And however much we hate 
 the doctrine of the supremacy of the 
 mailed fist in theory, are we not all more 
 or less infected with its spirit ? 
 
 The first mistake which people make 
 lies on the surface. They do not under- 
 stand the real meaning of meekness. It 
 seems to mean being gentle in method 
 and submissive in spirit to the attack 
 of wrong or injustice; but that inter- 
 pretation does not go to the heart of it. 
 There is a meekness which is false and 
 
 83 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 worthless. If we are wronged or in- 
 sulted, for instance, we may take it 
 quietly for other reasons than the highest. 
 We may not answer back because we are 
 afraid of further trouble, or because we 
 do not think it is the policy which will 
 help our own interests. The best way 
 to succeed may be to refrain from 
 irritating our opponent. That is not 
 meekness ; it may be cowardice or worldly 
 prudence—a far different thing. On the 
 other hand, we may let an injury pass 
 because we are too easy-going, or because 
 we do not feel deeply enough for the 
 wrong to hurt us. That is not meek- 
 ness; it may be moral indifference. 
 There are people who cannot be insulted 
 because they have lost the power to feel 
 the sting of a moral reproach. Their 
 standard is so low that nothing can 
 possibly move them to indignation. ‘That 
 is not meekness. It is moral atrophy. 
 It is a diseased spirit which is benumbed 
 against the sting of wrong. 
 
 What then is meckness? It is the 
 84 
 
The Meek 
 
 spirit which accepts life and seeks to 
 learn from it, without kicking at its ills 
 or its rebuffs. It is the opposite of self- 
 assertiveness. The meek man has ceased 
 to care about himself or to think about 
 himself. His pride has been crucified. 
 He does not measure the importance of 
 events by their relation to his personal 
 comfort or happiness or self-esteem. 
 
 This freedom from self-regard is the 
 secret of the gentle spirit towards those 
 who wrong or insult us. A meek man 
 will feel the wrong and feel it bitterly, 
 but it quickens no savage anger in his 
 soul against him who has done the wrong, 
 for he is not thinking mainly of himself, 
 and is therefore not susceptible to 
 wounded feelings or ruffled pride. If 
 the insulting remark is true it will be 
 little worse than what he has said of him- 
 self to God in an hour of reality. “ Let 
 him alone and let him curse,” once-cried 
 David, when his enemy was flinging at 
 him poisoned darts of insult which had 
 in them more than a spice of truth, “ let 
 
 8c 
 
 ~ 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 him alone and let him curse, it may be 
 the Lord hath bidden him.” There is 
 sometimes a moral antiseptic in the 
 sneers of others for which a meek man 
 will even give God thanks. » But even if 
 there be no truth in the insult and no 
 justice in the blow, a meek man will still 
 restrain the passionate protest, for his 
 conscience is clear. He will rather be 
 full of pity for one who can be so blinded 
 by the storms of hate and passion. At the 
 worst the bitter utterance or injustice 
 will drive him back on the comfort of 
 God’s own truth and love. That com- 
 fort, that inward vision of righteousness 
 and truth which is the smile of God, 
 belongs to the blessedness of the meek. 
 Stevenson tells how, travelling in the 
 Cevennes, he came through the district 
 of ancient persecutions, where, when 
 cruelty was at its height, there was one at. 
 least who, facing certain death and 
 possible torture, could say, “ My soul 
 is like a watered garden full of shelter and 
 fountains.” ‘That inward peace and joy 
 
 86 
 
The Meek 
 
 is part of the blessing of the meek and 
 quiet spirit. Truth becomes luminous 
 to us when we stand for it in a dark time 
 and “being reviled, revile not again.” 
 That kind of meekness does, in surprising 
 ways, inherit the earth, and come to the 
 throne. It is the secret of victory. 
 
 / There is a power in a meek man, scorned 
 
 and bearing the scorn in quietness, which 
 comes at last to stagger and confound the 
 adversary and lay him open to the truth 
 
 ‘and love he scorns. Truth has, in the 
 
 long run, no other champion, and love 
 no other way than the spirit which is so 
 strong and sure of God that it will 
 neither bluster nor drive, but “‘ hope and 
 quietly wait for the salvation of the 
 Lord.” 
 
 But meekness concerns not only our 
 attitude to others: it concerns our whole 
 attitude to life. Meekness is the 
 Christian way of meeting life and all its 
 experiences—the opposite of the push- 
 ful, thrusting, self-centred way, always 
 out for selfish advantage, and reading the 
 
 87 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 goods of life in terms of possession, or 
 position, or material comfort. One of 
 the commonest mistakes we make is 
 seeking to impose our own will upon life, 
 We refuse to accept our circumstances 
 and seek to know where the finger points. 
 Instead of asking where the right way 
 lies we set up some target for ambition 
 and aim at it, or mark some spot on the 
 summit of success and make for it—what- 
 ever tangled thickets may lie in the road. 
 It is our proud boast when we have 
 attained, that we have bent things to 
 our will. We have “ arrived.” 
 
 I am the captain of my fate. 
 I am the master of my soul. 
 
 Or we may adopt some fancy of the 
 kind of person we would like to be and 
 strive to model ourselves on that, instead 
 of asking, to begin with, what shape the 
 unseen Potter with His tool of circum- 
 stance and His loving design may be 
 seeking to make us, or leaving that to Him, 
 
 88 
 
The Meek 
 
 and being content to follow, step by 
 step, the way of love, like a ship sailing 
 under sealed orders which are only 
 opened from point to point. The result 
 of this is fatal to any real satisfaction, 
 even when we succeed; and when we 
 fail, as most often happens, the process 
 is one of disillusionment and heart-break. | 
 It is a question whether the success of 
 the self-willed thrusting their way through 
 the world ,without fear or scruple to a 
 peak of ambition, or the failure of those 
 who find the world constantly thwarting 
 their hope, brings the deeper unhappiness. 
 The meek man does not face life with any 
 fixed ideas of his own, or seek the good 
 of life in his own advantage or his own 
 success. ‘This great world must have 
 a bigger purpose in it than merely to 
 pamper you and me. The meek man. 
 looks for that purpose and finds it in 
 Jesus. That is his first victory. It is . 
 the power, through his very meekness, 
 to see the meaning of life in Jesus. What 
 is that meaning? It becomes clear as 
 
 89 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 it opens out in the vision of God as Father 
 seeking, amid all this tangled scheme of 
 things, the good of each and all of His 
 children. But just because He is Father, 
 the good of His children which He 
 seeks is not our comfort or our con- 
 venience. It is our development as moral 
 persons, with hearts to love and wills to 
 choose the good, and minds to understand 
 His purpose and serve it, and so, through 
 all the machinery of circumstance and 
 the furnishing of life, to become more and 
 more capable of realizing our sonship with 
 the Father and entering into fellowship 
 with Him. To see that purpose in the 
 world is the secret of meekness. ‘To see ~ 
 God’s love and care for us through every- 
 thing—how in all life’s tasks and trials - 
 He is seeking our blessedness—that is the 
 real secret of the quiet heart. What 
 matter then( “the slings and arrows of 
 outrageous fortune”’\ if the duty they 
 bring and the discipline they appoint. 
 have in them the very purpose of the 
 Father’s love ? What matter the suffer- 
 
 go 
 
The Meek 
 
 ing and the shadow if all the way there is 
 the gracious shepherding of God ! 
 
 Do not let us, however, make any 
 mistake. Meekness is not mere tame 
 resignation to a kind of fate, or the 
 passive acceptance of circumstance. It 
 is an obvious fact that the same situation 
 may suggest quite different things to 
 one man from what it suggests to another. 
 Our circumstances colour life without a 
 doubt, but it is we who choose the colour. 
 What is for one man a blank wall to turn 
 him back will be to another a challenge 
 to scale it or break through. Meekness 
 is quiet, because it knows that all that 
 happens brings its message, and yields 
 its fruit, and opens out some way of op- 
 portunity. The way may be one of 
 battle, but in any case it will be one of 
 divinely ordered duty ; and only in quiet- 
 ness and in confidence, while the glare of 
 the sun is overhead or the storm whistles 
 through the valley, can the true way be 
 seen. Meekness is thus no mere want 
 
 of blood and spirit. Look through his- 
 gl 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 tory, and the really meek people have often 
 “been the biggest fighters for right, the 
 _ finest heroes of the truth. Was anyone so 
 terrible as Moses, and yet it was written 
 of him that “ this man, Moses, was meek, 
 above all other men who dwell on the 
 face of the earth”? ? Meekness leashed 
 his strength. It imprisoned his volcanic 
 fire to uge it for the ends of the kingdom, 
 as cordite which becomes explosive only 
 when it is confined. Meekness neither 
 broke his spirit nor put out the flame. 
 Abraham Lincoln was of the meek in 
 spirit. His attitude was well expressed 
 in an address as candidate for the Presi- 
 dency: *‘ I know there is a God and that 
 He hates injustice and slavery. I see the 
 storm coming and I know His hand is 
 init. If He has a place and work for me, 
 and I believe He has, I am ready. I am 
 nothing, but truth is everything.” But 
 with that spirit Lincoln was the very in- 
 carnation of strength. A strong man 
 is all the stronger when meekness lifts 
 - him out of himself. He is by that very 
 
 g2 
 
The Meek 
 
 thing delivered from fears and from 
 vanity and all that lays on us the finger of 
 prudence and selfish regard. Who was 
 so terrible as Christ, when He saw the 
 way through the opposing currents? 
 Who so heroic and full of spirit as when 
 He rode into Jerusalem—to a Cross which 
 He saw there athwart the skyline? Yet 
 He said of Himself, “ I am meek and lowly 
 in heart.” His very strength and courage 
 was in His meekness. His rest of heart 
 was the secret of His energy. He knew 
 the secret of the quiet mind—the blessing 
 of the meek, | 
 
 But come now to the second part of 
 the verse— for they shall inherit the 
 earth.” That statement is perhaps the 
 most fiercely contested. Some will grant 
 that meekness is a beautiful and fragrant 
 virtue, but they will deny that the meek 
 inherit the earth, or anything like it. 
 Experience proves the reverse, they will 
 say. It is the strong, the mighty, the 
 ‘self-assertive who are in the seats of posses- 
 sion and power. The meek may have 
 
 93 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 their heaven beyond, or their own little 
 private heaven in their souls even now. 
 But that they inherit the earth—oh, no! 
 Is not the very contrary of this the stand- 
 ing problem of the Old Testament saints 
 —the total inconsistency of things? Let 
 us, however, come to grips with this 
 matter. Look closely at the hustler, — 
 the self-assertive man, who in the eyes of | 
 the world seems to inherit the earth, or, 
 at all events, a big proportion of it. What 
 has he got after all? “I imagined I was 
 buying pleasure,” said a wealthy man to 
 a well-known doctor whom he was con- 
 sulting for a nervous breakdown, “ and I 
 discovered I was only buying anxiety.” 
 How much does anyone really get out of 
 possessions ? Only so much as his mind 
 and spirit can take in of the spiritual 
 quality of things. Take the man who 
 goes in for money and comfort and 
 position as the chief good of life. Does 
 he really possess what he owns? Does 
 he really get out of it as much as he 
 pretends? Does he not often confess 
 
 94 
 
The Meek 
 
 in his heart that “ the game is not worth 
 the candle?” A successful man com- 
 plained the other day, “ The worst of it is 
 that when you have reached your ambi- 
 tion, you come to it too tired to enjoy it,” 
 which is surely a sign that that which has 
 in it no real joy and satisfaction when one 
 has got it, and for which, to get it, life 
 has been turned into a kind of cockpit 
 struggle cannot be the real meaning of 
 life. Look at our civilization, in which 
 the gifts of invention and industry are 
 supposed to enable us to inherit the earth. 
 _Is there any reality behind it all? A 
 well-known Hindoo puts this question 
 after a stay of five years in Europe, “ What 
 is this civilization anyhow?” he asks. 
 “I have lived in four of its chief centres 
 and have studied it with the little light 
 I have, and I confess that the study has 
 deeply pained me. This vaunted civili- 
 zation has raised selfishness to a religious 
 creed, mammon to the throne of God, 
 adulteration to a science, and falsehood to 
 a fine art. It has created artificial wants 
 
 95 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 for man and made him the slave of work 
 to satisfy them ; it has made him restless 
 without and within, and robbed him of 
 leisure, the only friend of high thought. 
 He knows no peace, hence he knows not 
 himself nor the real object of life. It» 
 has made him a breathing, fighting, 
 hustling, spinning, machine.” That is 
 a view worth pondering. Can anyone 
 doubt that there is truth in its verdict on 
 our age and on its claim to inherit the 
 earth by mere dexterity of brain and power 
 _of material possession? How can we 
 find the good, even of life’s material 
 things, save as we see its real meaning 
 in the purpose of God and in the service 
 of one another; and discover in all its 
 joys that which Jesus found in a desert 
 flower—the loving care and creative 
 Providence of the Father? But this 
 demands the meek and quiet spirit, 
 willing to see, to wonder, and to conse- 
 crate. 
 
 Life’s material gains are a very small 
 part of life even for the man who has 
 
 96 
 
The Meek 
 
 most of them. The joy of life lies in its 
 personal relations, and these have nothing 
 to do with what a man has, but only 
 with what he ts. A palace is a decorated 
 prison ifit benot ahome. Social éclat and 
 prestige are bubbles if there be no real 
 friendship. It is the simple things that 
 make life sweet, and who is he who gets 
 the real joy ofthem ? Not the man whose 
 heart is set on ambitions or whose eye 
 is dazzled by pride, but only he whose 
 mind is turned outwards from himself 
 to find in life what God has given. 
 Love and beauty and clean labour—these 
 are the heart of life, but only those who 
 are not seeking great things for them- 
 selves can find them. The proud and 
 ambitious may have the field; the meek 
 man strolling by the wayside discovers 
 the treasure. 
 
 There are, too, other things in the earth 
 than these. The garden has its shady 
 as well as its sunny side, and we must take 
 it all together. It has its thorns as well 
 as its roses. We have the bitter with the 
 
 f 97 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 sweet : life sees to that. What of disap- 
 pointment, what of suffering, what of 
 pain? Are we only to look on these as 
 dross, which we toss aside to gather the 
 jewels? Are we to enter these in that 
 folio of the ledger where we write off 
 the items we can never realize—our dead 
 stock? If so, we have failed—tfailed be- 
 cause we have not entered into our full 
 estate. The problem Jesus had to solve 
 was how to take the bitter, tragic, stuff 
 and transmute it into the gold of an 
 enriching possession—to make it a part of 
 the real inheritance of life. His elixir 
 for this is the spirit of meekness. ‘To see 
 God’s purpose in life is to find God’s 
 hand in it. To seek God’s will in it is to 
 hear God’s challenge through it. To 
 listen quietly for God’s voice amid the 
 chilling darkness is to find a place of 
 spiritual victory over it. There are many 
 things we cannot understand, but none 
 we cannot master, none we cannot use. 
 There are many things that darken our 
 sky, but none that may not help us, 
 
 98 
 
The Meek 
 
 soften us, cleanse us, refine us, and equip 
 us for helping others. 
 
 Material just meant to give thy soul its bent, 
 Fix thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently im- 
 pressed. 
 
 And that is the meaning and the 
 blessedness of life. It is, not what we 
 make in it, but what it makes of us by the 
 grace of God. The whole power to 
 possess the earth lies there—in the meek- 
 ness which lays us open to the secret of 
 Jesus. “ All things are yours, whether 
 life, or death, or things present, or things 
 to come, all are yours, for ye are Christ’s 
 
 and Christ is God’s.” 
 
ef 
 
 Cais tM 
 
 
 
CuarTrer V 
 
 THEY THAT HUNGER AND 
 THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 

 
V. They that Hunger and Thirst 
 after Righteousness <= 2 
 
 *¢ Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” 
 
 T is never wise to be dogmatic as 
 to what was in the mind of Jesus when 
 He uttered any of His great sayings, 
 unless we are expressly told. His heart 
 was many chambered, and had rooms in 
 its compassion for every sort of troubled 
 soul. But it would not be going too far 
 to suggest that there were two classes 
 of people of whom He was particularly 
 thinking when He made this statement 
 about the hunger after righteousness. 
 There were, first of all, the people who 
 hungered and thirsted, though not for 
 righteousness. Life’ for them was one 
 long series of wants and cravings, and 
 to satisfy these they went out into the 
 world clutching here and there in every 
 
 103 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 direction. Some filled their days with 
 pleasure and were always after a new 
 sensation. Some were climbing the ladder 
 of ambition, some striving for knowledge. 
 They were all seeking for something 
 they had not got, hungering and thirsting 
 for what they imagined would satisfy 
 the inward unrest. In the depth of 
 his being man is profoundly unhappy. 
 That is what we have not always realized. 
 
 We look before and after ; we pine for what is 
 not ; 
 Our serenest laughter with some pain is fraught. 
 
 Some people are so sure that what we 
 call the natural man must be happy. 
 They do not realize that much appearance 
 of happiness isa camouflage. ‘The trouble 
 is that we are here in a world in which 
 we have to find a balance, called peace, 
 between our nature and the universe 
 in which we live. And the balance is 
 not easy to find. The way to peace 
 along the purely material, or even along 
 
 104 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 the intellectual line, is impossible, save 
 at the cost of suppressing or denying 
 the deeper instincts of the soul. And 
 that suppression is never final. You can 
 never be sure something will not happen 
 to call up that deeper self which has been 
 dismissed to the basement, and “ fifty 
 hopes and fears,” from some hidden 
 ambush, rise “‘ to rap and knock and enter 
 on the soul,” and then it is good-bye 
 to peace along material lines. That is 
 what these people whom Christ saw all 
 around Him were finding out. They were 
 hungering and thirsting, but they were 
 not being filled. They had no peace. They 
 might protest that they were happy—a 
 thing happy people never need to do. 
 But they carried the signals of inward 
 unrest on their very faces, as hundreds 
 all round us are doing. The streets 
 are full of people who show, in the strain 
 upon their faces, the flag of distress, 
 Jesus marked these signs. He went 
 straight to His target with the right 
 word for the right person, as if He had 
 
 105 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 been carrying a message for that particular 
 one through all the world. It was, in 
 part at least, these people of the uneasy 
 peace and the restless cravings whom He 
 had in mind. You are on the wrong 
 track, He seemed to say. You are hunger- 
 ing and thirsting for things that will 
 never satisfy you. You must change the 
 direction of your desires. You must aim 
 higher. “ Blessed are they that hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness, for they 
 shall be filled.” 
 
 But there are another class of people 
 whom He had in mind: those who were 
 secking peace in righteousness. They 
 were trying to find a righteousness which 
 they could easily satisfy, in which they 
 would cease to hunger and thirst. They 
 were trying to fulfil the claim of righteous- 
 ness by an artificial standard of conduct, 
 in which they would get rid of the reproach 
 of conscience and the torment of the 
 ideal. : 
 
 Every man who is born into this world 
 becomes conscious sooner or later of a 
 
 106 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 claim which is made on him—the claim 
 of duty or of right. Daniel Webster, 
 the great American statesman, was once 
 asked, “‘ What is the greatest thought 
 that has ever entered your mind ?” 
 He paused for a moment, and then he 
 replied, “The thought of my personal 
 accountability to God.” ‘The voice of 
 duty may vary its tone according to the 
 sensitiveness of conscience, or the cir- 
 cumstances in which we have been born 
 and trained. But in some form or another 
 the claim of conscience makes itself heard. 
 The great word “ought” throws its 
 shadow over our life as real as a hand 
 laid on our shoulders. We may argue 
 about it as we like, there are things which 
 when we are quite sincere, we know in 
 our hearts we ought to do and to be, and 
 things we ought not. Every race or 
 tribe, however primitive, has its own 
 moral code. ‘The reason why we ought 
 to do certain things we may not know; 
 the more deeply we ponder, the more 
 clearly we shall realize that this compul- 
 
 107 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 sion on the spirit comes.from nothing less 
 than the heart of God Himself and from 
 our real relationship to Him. But 
 however the claim may come, it is there, 
 and there is no peace till we satisfy it. 
 There are vatious ways, however, of 
 satisfying it. Some people put this claim 
 of righteousness into certain definite 
 moral precepts which they strive to obey. 
 When they have obeyed these, more or 
 less, they persuade themselves that they 
 have squared the debt and can face the 
 world like men who have paid their 
 creditors twenty shillings in the pound. 
 That was how the Pharisees tried to deal 
 with this claim of righteousness. ‘They 
 set out the claim in the various precepts 
 of the Law, and by obeying these, tried 
 to work off the haunting sense of debt. 
 ‘That was the secret of their devotion to 
 the Law. They wanted an escape from 
 conscience, the ruthless pursuer—a refuge 
 from the “ majestic instancy” of his 
 * following feet.” The Pharisees wanted 
 to get rid of this insatiable torment of ~ 
 
 108 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 the ideal, this constant shadow of imper- 
 fection which made them ashamed of 
 themselves and broke their pride and 
 self-complacency. Saul, the one-time 
 Pharisee’s ruthless persecution of the 
 
 Christians arose from that. He hunted > 
 
 them because God was pursuing him. And 
 lots of people who do not think they are 
 Pharisees, are trying to do the same thing 
 to-day. You will hear a man say, “I 
 pay my debts, I live a clean life, I try 
 to help other people.” That is a very 
 popular kind of statement to make, and 
 it invariably raises a cheer for an honest 
 man. But that is the spirit of Pharisaism 
 none the less, though it come from a man 
 who has nothing to do with religion and 
 never enters a church door. The same 
 thing appears in the idea—popular in 
 some quarters—that if people will attend 
 early Communion, or morning service, 
 they can do with the rest of Sunday what 
 they like. They are really trying to 
 square the inward creditor, called Con- 
 science, by a composition which they can 
 
 109 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 pay. And that is the essence of Phari- 
 saism. It is the spirit of the man who 
 owns that God has His rights in his life, 
 but who tries to settle with Him by 
 setting up an artificial standard of con- 
 duct which he can more or less reach. 
 And you find, when you get to the root 
 of it, that the whole effort is made in 
 order to be quit of this hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness. It is to quiet their 
 conscience, which, with all their ritual 
 of decent habits or religious observance, 
 can never quite be stilled and never quite 
 leaves them in peace. It was these 
 people Jesus had in mind. Do not 
 imagine, He said, that you are going to 
 find peace by getting rid of this hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness on easy 
 terms, or indeed on any terms at all. If 
 you only knew it, your blessedness con- 
 sists in just this very hunger and thirst. 
 Your satisfaction is just in this craving 
 which cannot be satisfied. Your real 
 joy does not lie along some easy way 
 of getting even with duty, or with God: 
 
 IIo 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 it lies in welcoming this inward strife for 
 righteousness and seeking an even deeper 
 insight into its meaning. “ Blessed are 
 they that hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness, for they shall be filled.” 
 Now, how do we explain this apparent 
 contradiction ? For it is a contradiction, 
 and the more we realize what Christ 
 meant by righteousness the more the 
 contradiction stares us in the face. What 
 was righteousness for Jesus? It was no 
 batch of cut-and-dried precepts, no con- 
 ventional code of morals, no clear system 
 of regulations. There are no rules in 
 the New Testament except the rules 
 which spring out of love, and these are 
 rules a man makes for himself. You 
 cannot put Christ’s righteousness into a 
 code-book, or into ten commandments, 
 or twenty; still less was righteousness 
 for Jesus a conventional standard of re- 
 spectable habits. ‘The respectable people 
 indeed looked on Him as a kind of 
 anarchist. His righteousness is of the 
 Spirit. If you want to put it into a 
 
 III 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 precept, the nearest approach to it is, 
 “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart and soul and strength and 
 mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.” 
 And what does that mean? It means 
 that righteousness is a way of life and 
 service springing from our own right 
 relation to God ; and that God, One who 
 is Father with no demand on us but 
 that of love. Who can say, except very 
 imperfectly, what would be the complete 
 way of life in this world of a man who is. 
 living fully and wholly as the child of 
 God the Father? And who can say, 
 except very imperfectly, into what chan- 
 nels the great river of love to men would 
 pour itself when once the fountain had 
 been set flowing in our souls? There 
 are, it is true, certain conventional things 
 which the Christian conscience has laid 
 it down should be done by people who 
 love their neighbours as God’s children. 
 But it is only too possible to be conven- 
 tionally affectionate yet loveless at heart. 
 It is only too painfully common for people 
 112 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 to live a correct and faultless Christian 
 life and to miss the whole spirit of Chris- 
 tianity. There are people who will do 
 a kind action in such a way as to make it 
 an insult. They will give bread to the 
 hungry and, in their lovelessness, turn 
 it into a stone. While there are others 
 who defy convention, or have not learned 
 it, yet their spirit ringstrue. Their words 
 are poor and crude, yet the spirit of love, 
 like the imprisoned flame within the uncut 
 diamond, flashes through every awkward 
 movement and every broken sentence. 
 We cannot put that spirit into formulas 
 of correct behaviour. Its demands are 
 measureless. It means a new order of 
 life in which we have to live every hour 
 of our day, in every throb of our being. 
 That is what Jesus means by righteouse 
 ness. And the craving to fulfil the spirit 
 _ of love in everything is the hunger and 
 thirst which is blessed. 
 
 Tt is the same when we come to ask 
 what love to God and to our neighbour 
 means in corporate life. What will cor- 
 
 8 113 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 porate righteousness mean? Are we to 
 be content with paying our debt or 
 keeping the present rules of the social 
 and industrialorder ? Or, for that matter 
 of it, is there any new order which will 
 finally and fully satisfy us? Some people 
 tell us that the love of our neighbour 
 demands a certain structure of society, 
 which they are able to set down, with all 
 its details, on paper. They insist that. 
 we have only to order our business and 
 industry by certain rules and make in- 
 dustry keep to them, and the millennium 
 will have come. And it is true that 
 righteousness demands its changes. But 
 no mechanical arrangements will satisfy 
 it. The ideal City of God is always 
 beyond us. The demands of a love- 
 quickened conscience are always ahead. 
 And however true to the suggestions of 
 the spirit of righteousness our rules or 
 arrangements for living together may be, 
 the real righteousness is of the spirit. 
 It may be just as true of our social recon- 
 struction as it was of the legalism of the 
 
 II4 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 Jews—that we have the form and lack 
 the reality. Our behaviour to others may 
 be scrupulously right and yet our atti- 
 tude grievously wrong. We need to 
 keep our hearts ceaselessly open and our 
 consciences always alive. That is what 
 the hunger for righteousness demands. 
 We may smile at Blake’s words about 
 building Jerusalem in England’s green 
 and pleasant land, at the heroics of the 
 sword which is never going to sleep, or 
 the mind which is never to have peace. 
 But that is what is in store for us if we 
 are out for the righteousness of Christ all 
 through. It is like climbing a mountain : 
 the higher we reach, we seem to find our- 
 selves in an air which is more and more 
 difficult to breathe, with a summit which 
 seems to move farther and farther off, as 
 if to mock us. 
 
 How then can Christ say that those 
 who hunger and thirst after righteousness 
 are blessed, and blessed because they shall 
 be satisfied ? 
 
 The key to the riddle is not so far to 
 
 115 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 seek. It is just this, that he who seeks 
 _ for a righteousness which is the infinite 
 demand of love upon his love-kindled | 
 heart and refuses to be content with a 
 limited standard, finds himself in a 
 relation to God which brings its own 
 satisfaction. He abides in the love of 
 God. He is breathing the air ofa 
 spiritual country which is his home. 
 Duty for him springs out of love, like 
 water from the fountain. That is the 
 secret of the blessedness of those that 
 hunger and thirst after righteousness. 
 Their hunger springs out of love. ‘Their 
 thirst rises out of their fellowship with 
 God. It is the joyful exercise of a nature 
 which has found its real life—its true 
 destiny. Look for instance, at the prodi- 
 gal and put yourself in that home where 
 he had discovered his father. His was 
 the hunger and thirst after righteousness. 
 ** Make me as one of thy hired servants. 
 I will work my fingers to the bone for 
 you. There is nothing I will not be glad 
 to do. Lay what demands on me you 
 
 116 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 like, you will never wear out my spirit.” 
 And why? Not to satisfy his father and 
 feel that he has paid his debt; for all 
 thought of debt had vanished in a love 
 he could never fully express. It was 
 another world he was living in—a world 
 whose name was home, where there was 
 no debt but that which springs from love. 
 So he longed to live out to the full this 
 new sonship, his longing all the time un- 
 satisfied, yet all the time filled with a joy 
 and a peace which was inexpressible, be- 
 cause his heart was right towards his 
 fatber and his sonship was real without 
 cloud or shadow. ‘That picture lets us 
 into the secret. When forgiving love 
 has won our hearts, righteousness, which 
 is the way of love in everything, becomes 
 the passionate adventure and untiring 
 quest of our souls, 
 
 There is a modern story of a prodigal 
 who came back too late. He had gone 
 by the accustomed route into the far 
 country and found himself in America. 
 _ Then came the hunger which loneliness 
 
 117 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 and need are designed to awaken and he 
 wrote a letter. The reply came back 
 which opened the way home, and the 
 next step would have been to take it. 
 He resolved to wait till he had “ made 
 good,” which was all in the way of right- 
 eousness. But he was not content with 
 a moderate restoration to security and 
 character. He wanted to reach a position 
 where he could return in a kind of triumph 
 without losing an atom of pride. So he 
 waited longer. He made a name for 
 himself, and then he planned his journey. 
 But he had delayed a year too long. His 
 father died before he reached home, 
 and when at last he came, there was noth- 
 ing for him except the cold ashes of 
 remorse. What was the real trouble? 
 It was surely this: he wanted to be right 
 with his father, but not on terms of a 
 loving forgiveness which demanded noth- 
 ing but penitence. He wanted to be 
 right with the old man on the terms of a 
 self-righteousness which would not require 
 to be forgiven. And for that he strove 
 
 118 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 —that fixed standard of his own good 
 deeds. But all the time he was denying 
 himself and his father the fellowship in 
 which he would have found the true 
 righteousness that alone would have satis- 
 fied his heart. He was putting into the 
 castle of pride the effort he should have 
 put into the building of fellowship. Had 
 he been content to come home and take 
 in humility the love that offered itself 
 to him, he need not have ceased his 
 effort to make good. But the difference 
 would have been this: the effort to win 
 peace would have been transmuted into 
 an effort to live out a fellowship which 
 would have been already his by the mere 
 act of taking it. 
 
 There is a word of warning here to 
 those who would seek some lower road 
 to peace than the highest, and are content 
 with some conventional stereotyped stan- 
 dard which is pitched according to the 
 estimate we make of our own ability. 
 That way lies stagnation, and boredom, 
 and ultimately death. Are we tempted, 
 
 119 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 for instance, to yield to the common cry 
 that Christianity is impracticable, and 
 to seek for something less? There is 
 only one result of that: it ceases to have 
 any more interest for us except as a 
 pastime. The Christianity which is not 
 always pioneering in the sphere — of the 
 impossible, will soon be rejected as mere 
 lumber, unless to all but leisured minds. 
 Where Christ ceases to be a challenge to 
 our conscience in every direction, He will 
 soon cease to be any kind of comfort to 
 our hearts. The heart of a man has no 
 use for a religion which cam be domesti- 
 cated like a tame cat, or a God who can 
 be reduced to the level of an indulgent 
 parent. We are living spiritually on a 
 kind of slope, in which there is no alter- 
 native between the fight to move up- 
 wards and the slackness that drifts down- 
 wards. God quicken us into the hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness! It is the 
 only assurance we can have that we are 
 alive. ‘The only security we can have for 
 our salvation is in a love which will give 
 
 120 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 us no rest from the struggle to be true 
 to it. 
 
 The nature of a Christian man, as the 
 Bible has often suggested, is like the heart 
 of a sailor who is out on the high seas. 
 His nature is to venture forth, not to 
 cruise about some sheltered harbour, or 
 drift timidly from point to point along 
 the shore. The winds may blow, and 
 there are storms to meet, and he is always 
 voyaging on and never seeming to get 
 nearer home. Day after day he scans 
 these wide waters and those distant 
 horizons that never close in, and he seems 
 never to be nearing port. But with all the 
 risk and storm and bafflement, there is 
 deep joy in his voyaging, and satisfaction. 
 For he is out where his nature longs to 
 be—he is committed to the life which is 
 hiselement. Soitiswith ourselves. The 
 way of righteousness is difficult. The 
 way of love is hard to find. We get lost 
 and bewildered, and just where to find 
 that thin thread of guiding, the path of 
 duty, is not always easy. But there is a 
 
 12! 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 satisfaction, full and glorious, amid all 
 the pain and disappointment which no 
 artificial standard can bring. 
 
 That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 Sees it and does it: 
 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 
 That has the world here; should he need the 
 
 next, 
 
 Let the world mind him! 
 
 This, throws himself on God, and unperplext, 
 Seeking, shall find Him. 
 
 But there is comfort here also for those 
 who are dismayed by the measurelessness 
 of love’s demands, and would fain make 
 some compromise to arrive at peace, 
 “Do not go back,” says Jesus. Thank 
 God if you hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness. ‘Thank God if, for you, 
 there is no finality. It brings to mind a 
 word of Stevenson’s “ Little do ye know 
 your own blessedness; for, to travel 
 hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, 
 and the true success is to labour.” Christ 
 put it differently. Struggling, striving 
 
 122 
 
They that Hunger and Thirst 
 
 onward, for deeper discernment of God’s 
 rule in life and of the meaning of His 
 righteousness in the daily round and the 
 common task, you are arriving all the 
 time, you ate there all the time—there, in 
 the fellowship of God. You shall be 
 filled here and now. Yours_is already 
 the full life, the satisfying life. 
 
 And there is even more than this, and 
 more wonderful, for in His good time you 
 shall find the perfect righteousness, the 
 complete life. It is they who hunger 
 and thirst, who bring in the new day, the 
 new age. It is they who are God’s 
 pioneers in a world of sin and chaos, 
 breaking out new paths in the desert 
 wherein the nations shall walk in the light 
 of His love. That victory will come. 
 When, we know not, but it will come. 
 ** Now it doth not yet appear what we 
 shall be, but we know that when He shall 
 appear, we shall be like Him.” That is 
 the promise, and we shall be satisfied 
 when, out of it all, we awake with His 
 likeness. 
 
 123 
 
oy Ny , 
 a 
 HENSON 
 
 
 
Cuapter VI 
 
 THE MERCIFUL 
 

 
VI. The Merciful o o o 
 
 ** Blessed are the merciful : for they shall 
 obtain mercy.” 
 
 fe is not without meaning that this 
 commendation of the merciful comes 
 next aiter that of those who hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness. One of the 
 temptations of the sensitive conscience 
 is the censorious spirit. ‘The heart that 
 is set on righteousness is prone to be 
 intolerant of moral weaklings and hard on 
 those whose standard is not so high. 
 When that happens to us we have merely 
 escaped one peril to fall into a deeper. 
 The world values a kind heart more than 
 a scrupulous conscience, and in its rough 
 judgment, the world is right. How 
 terribly devastating that which seems 
 the way of right can become when it 
 loses the spirit of love, we can see in the 
 -Inquisition, when the very body of 
 
 i, 
 
 ot yg, 
 
 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 Christ was crucified afresh in an effort 
 to keep it pure. What happened there, 
 of course, was due to the fact that with- 
 out the spirit of love we cannot even see 
 the way to right. And Jesus, who knew 
 the snares which the soul meets on its 
 way to God, bids us remember that the 
 way of right is the way of love, and the 
 only right way of love, in such a weak and 
 sinning world as this, is the way of mercy. 
 
 What He means by mercy here, is often 
 understood in a narrow sense. It is often 
 restricted to mere humanitarianism and 
 pity. The work of mercy is limited to 
 kindness to those who are broken and 
 beaten in the battle of life. It is Red 
 Cross work, so to speak. The merciful 
 man is a kind of ambulance worker, 
 picking up the wounded and caring for the 
 sick and the diseased. No doubt this 
 comes within the scope of Christ’s great 
 word. Every hospital is a home of mercy. 
 Every effort to heal men’s bodies is of the 
 spirit of mercy. It is worth while to 
 remind ourselves that it is the spirit of 
 
 128 
 
The Merciful 
 
 Christ which has kindled the compassion 
 whereby these things are done. Mercy, 
 in this sense, was barely known among the 
 ancients ; and where it was known it was 
 regarded as a kind of extra goodness— 
 not, as we see it now, the very least that 
 goodness will do. And even where it 
 was admired it was looked on as being 
 too expensive in a world where a man’s 
 chief business is to look after himself, 
 If we have risen so far above the jungle 
 as to care for the weak and the suffering 
 instead of carrying them out into the 
 forest to die, it is Christ who has led the 
 way and made pity for the feeble a com- 
 monplace of goodness. And only through 
 the pity which Christ sustains can this 
 be effectively done. You remember that 
 scene in Tennyson’s poem on the Hospital. 
 The great surgeon comes into the ward 
 with his cynical jibe at prayer, and his 
 intolerant pride of surgical dexterity in 
 mending the human machine. “ Christ’s 
 day is done,” he says. ‘“ Nay,” replies 
 the nurse, “ it has only begun.” 
 9 129 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 How could I work in the wards 
 If the hope of the world were a lie! 
 How could I bear with the sights 
 And the loathsome smells of disease, 
 But that He said, “‘ Ye do it for me, 
 When ye do it for these ?” 
 
 Clever fingers may set a broken bone 
 it is true, and they are needed; but we 
 are learning in these days that the real 
 cure of all disease depends on a finer 
 touch—the touch of a love that can mend 
 a broken heart and minister to a mind 
 diseased. As Mr. Stephen Graham says, 
 “ Philanthropical societies, parliaments, 
 reform movements, and the like, are 
 doomed to failure, unless they are served 
 by men and women with Christ-faces.” 
 
 This kind of blessedness needs no 
 description for those who have stretched 
 out strong hands of pity to their fellows. 
 No one can help to heal another’s trouble 
 without finding some wound in his own 
 heart dry up. That is indeed the only 
 real way of healing for ourselves—to pass 
 
 130 
 
The Merctful 
 
 out of self-absorption and self-pity on the 
 tide of a great compassion. ‘This is the 
 real direction in which we are to look for 
 reward. It does not always follow that 
 because you care for the weak and suffer- 
 ing, others will care for you. It did not 
 happen so with Christ. Who so tender 
 as He, so full of mercy to the suffering, 
 and who so cruelly treated in the end at 
 the merciless hands of men? There are 
 times when it almost seems as if the very 
 people we try to help, dislike us for it. “I 
 do not understand why that man should 
 hate me,” said a cynic once. “I never 
 did him any good.” ‘This virtue, like all 
 others, must be its own reward. But 
 if our hearts are turned from ourselves 
 we do have our reward; for a well of 
 sweetness is opened up in our own hearts 
 and often in the world around us, in 
 which our own dry spirits are refreshed 
 and comforted. The spirit of mercy 
 lights fires in other hearts, which in 
 time come to warm our own. There 
 is no finer possession than a tender heart 
 
 131 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 —even though it bring a crown of 
 thorns. 
 
 The song is to the singer, and comes back most 
 to him; 
 The gift is to the giver, and comes back most 
 to him ; 
 The love is to the lover, and comes back most 
 to him; 
 —it cannot fail. 
 
 But this use of mercy is a narrowing 
 of the word. Christ meant by mercy a 
 far wider thing. He is thinking of our 
 attitude to the morally, as well as the 
 physically, unfit. The word outlines our 
 whole policy to those who have gone 
 wrong. ‘There are many classes of wrong- 
 doers. There are those whose sin is 
 very largely private and limited in its 
 consequence to the wrongdoer himself, 
 though “no man liveth to himself.” 
 There are those, again, who have done 
 some ill to ourselves; and some, like our 
 criminals, both individuals and nations, 
 
 132 
 
The Merciful 
 
 whose sin has done damage to society, 
 and brought evil on the community in 
 which God has set us to live together. 
 How are we to treat these people ?. What 
 attitude are we to take up towards them ? 
 That is avery practical question. It 
 is this—our relation to the wrongdoer— 
 which Christ has mostly in mind in this 
 beatitude. 
 
 What does mercy in this sense mean ? 
 It means, for one thing, the kindly judg- 
 ment, not of the sinful deed, but of the 
 man himself by whom it has been done. 
 How intolerant we are apt to be in our 
 judgments of people! How sweeping 
 in our condemnations! One false step; 
 and a man is doomed to carry the shadow 
 of reproach all his days. And our con- 
 demnations are not only sweeping—they 
 are apt to be artificial. The things we 
 ‘condemn in others are not always the 
 things which Christ would condemn. 
 There is no more extraordinary word of 
 His than that in which He bids “ judge 
 not that ye be not judged.” On the face 
 
 133 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 of it, it seems to lack something of moral 
 stamina. What the world seems to need 
 more than anything is a healthy hatred 
 of wrong. But notice: Christ is not 
 speaking of the sin; He is speaking of 
 the sinner. Our danger is to import 
 into our attitude towards the sinner the 
 hatred we feel of his sin. Christ’s interest 
 is always in the man. What is going to 
 happen to him ? Howis he to be cured ? 
 It is with this in mind that He calls for 
 the merciful judgment. And is He not 
 right ? How can we judge till we know 
 the facts? And how can we know the 
 full facts till we know the man himself— 
 know what hidden fires of passion burn 
 in his blood kindled long ago by others’ 
 sin, what lurid temptations have tracked 
 him down, how far the community has 
 contributed to his fall? Aye, and what 
 struggles he made before the ship went 
 down at last. 
 
 What’s done, we partly may compute, 
 But know not what’s resisted. 
 
 134 
 
The Merciful 
 
 Are we not constantly being found out 
 in wrong judgments? Here is one whom 
 the world condemns as mean, but one day 
 it comes out that he has been saving all 
 he could to keep the family of a scape- 
 grace brother. Here is another whose 
 temper is not of the best, but behind the 
 scenes she has a wearing struggle with 
 ul-health, or is bearing a weight of 
 trouble whose bitterness has sent the 
 iron into her soul. And how can we 
 measure even the sin, save as we see it © 
 with the eyes of Jesus? ‘The conscience 
 of society for evil is in point of fact, like 
 a diseased eye: it is full of blind spots. 
 There are sins which it sees with dazzling 
 clearness, and there are sins which it does 
 _ not see at all. The code of morals and 
 manners, by which a man is judged to 
 be a gentleman, has often little relation 
 to the values of Jesus. For Him, pride 
 and censoriousness and selfish greed were 
 chiefest of sins, and many of the things 
 which seem pardonable to the world 
 stand out, in the light of Christ, black 
 
 135 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 as a mountain lake when the snow has 
 fallen on the landscape. ‘The eye of love 
 is the only true eye to see with, and the 
 eye of love is the eye of mercy. 
 
 But mercy means more than a kindly 
 judgment of the wrongdoer. It means 
 the effort to restore him to righteous- 
 ness. That is always what Christ is 
 interested in. How to get the sinner 
 back—back to his place in our friendship, 
 back to his place in society, back to his 
 place in the love of God. That is the 
 chief interest for Jesus, and it calls for the 
 spirit of mercy and forgiveness. 
 
 For forgiveness is just the effort to 
 restore. [here is no real forgiveness of 
 anyone which is not an effort to restore 
 to fellowship. It is no use saying of 
 any man, “I forgive, but I do not for- 
 get,” meaning that while we have given 
 up the effort to take vengeance upon 
 him, or pay him back for his crime, there 
 is still a barrier which stands and which 
 we mean to keep standing. That is 
 simply not forgiveness at all, for forgive- 
 
 136 
 
The Merciful 
 
 ~ ness-is the passion to restore. That is 
 the whole point of those great parables 
 of the fifteenth of Luke. The Pharisees 
 were wondering why Christ made friends 
 of the publicans and sinners. For reply 
 He told them three parables of lost things 
 which were restored. The lost sheep was 
 restored to the flock, the lost piece was 
 restored to its place in the necklace, the 
 lost son was restored to his place in the 
 home. In every case love looks on people 
 who have gone wrong as lost things who 
 need to be restored. The way of mercy 
 is that of the forgiving, tender spirit which 
 seeks their restoration to the world and 
 to God. 
 
 Mercy’s campaign of restoration 
 operates in various directions. ‘There are 
 those who may have wronged ourselves. 
 Mercy there means the attitude of forgive- 
 ness. It is perfectly true that forgiveness 
 is not complete till there is repentance, 
 which just means that there is no complete 
 restoration till the prodigal comes home 
 ason. As a matter of fact, we can have 
 
 137 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 no fellowship with a man whose spirit 
 is not in harmony with ours. There are 
 things we cannot say to him, and all the 
 gracious traffic of love has come to a 
 stand-still. But do not let us forget that 
 the thing that wrought in the Prodigal’s 
 soul, and broke out at last in penitence, 
 was the father’s forgiving love, which 
 was there all the time, baffled, but never 
 slain. Had the father taken up a stand- 
 offish position and locked his door, as if 
 to say, “ You will have to creep back on 
 hands and knees before I will take a step 
 to help you,” there would have been 
 little hope of the Prodigal’s repentance. 
 His hunger and solitude would never 
 have touched his heart but only hardened 
 it. His sense of sin would never have 
 broken out in prayers and tears; it 
 would have stiffened into a stubborn 
 defiance. The spirit of forgiveness is 
 part of the creative power of love. ‘There 
 is no surer weapon in all the armoury of 
 the spirit for bringing the wrongdoer to 
 his knees. ‘Blessed are the merciful,” 
 
 138 
 
The Merciful 
 
 for it is they, and not earth’s ruthless 
 judges, who awaken the prayer for 
 mercy. 
 
 This has its application also to society’s 
 treatment of the criminal. Nothing needs 
 more overhauling than our thought about 
 crime and punishment. Our outlook on 
 this matter is largely based on retribu- 
 tionanar fear 5 not ..oni mercy. lt) 15) 
 partly based on giving a man what it 
 seems to us he deserves, not that which 
 will make him a better man, and partly 
 on the need to protect society from being 
 robbed or hurt, by making the would-be 
 criminal afraid. That is very roughly 
 our theory of punishment, and, with all 
 its appearance of being watertight, it is 
 as full of holes as.a sieve. So far as 
 putting an end to crime is concerned, our 
 system is three-parts a failure; for a 
 large number of the crimes of the country 
 are committed by the same people who 
 need an army of officials to watch them, 
 both when they are in prison and when 
 they are out of it; while statistics prove 
 
 139 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 that crime is decreased according to the 
 humanity of our dealings with the 
 criminal. 
 
 But the difference between us and 
 Jesus is that while we are thinking of the 
 community and how to protect it from 
 being robbed or hurt, Jesus is thinking 
 always about the person who does the 
 injury. We study how to keep our 
 goods. Christ is not greatly interested 
 in that. His question is how the thief 
 is to be kept from stealing them, not by 
 locks and bars, but by being turned into an 
 honest man. That is what concerns Him. 
 How are we to deal with such a man so 
 that he may be restored to citizenship 
 and honesty ? That is the problem He 
 sets us. His point of view is hard to 
 reach, but it is clear. He was not 
 afraid of being hurt or robbed; His 
 whole interest was to save the man who 
 might intend to do it, or had done it. 
 ‘J was in prison and ye visited me.” 
 That shows how His mind was running. 
 
 That is the picture that holds His mind 
 140 
 
The Merciful 
 
 as He looks round on His world. That 
 is His thought of the true goal of 
 mercy. 
 
 But what about justice ? we ask. What 
 of the consequences which follow sin, and 
 must follow sin? No one can ever 
 escape the consequences of sin, whether 
 society deals with them or not, for the 
 worst consequences of sin are in the soul 
 of the sinner. As for what we call our 
 justice, with its graduated scales of 
 punishments, it may help a man to see 
 his sin, or give him time to repent, or take 
 him out of a bad environment, but do 
 not let us call it justice. Shakespeare’s 
 way of putting it is worth thinking about : 
 “Consider this, that in the course of 
 justice, none of us should see salvation.” 
 Where would we stand if our rough-and- 
 ready methods of punishment were to 
 be applied with the standards of Jesus ? 
 What is justice ? Justice is giving a man 
 his due. And what is a man’s due? 
 It is just what he needs for a complete 
 life as a child of God, what he needs for 
 
 I4I 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 the redemption of his manhood. That 
 is his due. Whatever is needed to reach 
 him, to change him, to help him to be a 
 better man, that is justice; and our 
 penal codes and methods of punishment 
 will never be anything but a makeshift 
 till they are modified by this outlook of 
 Jesus. In His love, justice and mercy 
 meet, for they are one; and mercy is 
 blessed, “‘ both to him that gives and him 
 that takes.” 
 
 Mercy has its application to nations 
 as well, and we are coming toseeit. Here 
 it means the effort to restore international 
 fellowship. ‘That was the real point of 
 Christ’s word about loving our enemies. 
 His purpose was, not only that we should 
 not become like them, infected by their 
 spirit of enmity, but that they should be 
 turned into friends. It is fellowship, 
 not mere security, which must be our 
 aim in international life; and indeed 
 only in the way of fellowship can real 
 security be obtained, as we are beginning 
 to see. 
 
 142 
 
The Merc:ful 
 
 And now—only now—are we in a 
 position to understand what Christ means 
 by the last clause of His beatitude— 
 “for they shall obtain mercy.” It is 
 no mere tit-for-tat. It is not simply 
 repayment by God for what we have 
 earned by our mercy. His forgiveness 
 is not won through any merit of ours. 
 What then does Christ mean—what, 
 too, does He mean by that other injunc- 
 tion which He teaches us to put into a 
 prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses, as 
 we forgive them that trespass against 
 us’ ? His meaning becomes clear when 
 we see forgiveness as restoration to His 
 fellowship. How can we be restored 
 to His fellowship except as we have His 
 Spirit and are ready, at least, to live in 
 the Divine order, which is the order of 
 love ? And how can that spirit of love 
 be a reality, except as we show it in all 
 our conduct to our fellows, and especially 
 to those who have gone wrong? ‘The 
 mercy by which God forgives us is not a 
 mere legal arrangement : it is a gracious, 
 
 143 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 seeking love which receivet those who 
 come. The one condition is that we 
 turn from the hard and loveless way, 
 and step into the new world in which 
 love reigns supreme in everything. So 
 it is the merciful alone who can receive 
 mercy. It is not that God refuses to 
 forgive the unmerciful spirit. It is a 
 matter of literal fact that He cannot. For 
 the man who has not the spirit of love 
 has not really returned to the Father’s 
 house. He is still dwelling amid the 
 husks of his own self-righteousness. 
 
 The experience which brings us within 
 the glory of the Divine mercy may come 
 in two ways. It may come through the 
 very effort to overcome some bitterness 
 of our own and to cherish the forgiving 
 spirit. That is not easy, it lays a real 
 cross upon the heart. And the very 
 difficulty we have in forgiving, its cost 
 to us, may give us some dim vision of what 
 it meant for Christ upon His Cross to 
 pray for mercy on His foes, and so bring 
 before our wondering eyes some hint of 
 
 Tt 
 
The Merciful 
 
 the miracle of the mercy of God. Or it 
 may come from the other side, and our 
 vision of God in Christ, suffering, for- 
 giving, may strike into our souls such a 
 sense of our own unworthiness and 
 awaken such gratitude, that our neigh- 
 bour’s wrong to us becomes a very light 
 and little thing to overcome. In any 
 case, we have not found our place in 
 God’s mercy till mercy becomes the very 
 habit of our life. We have not found our 
 place in the great family of God till we 
 are cherishing the Father’s spirit. It is 
 not a matter of bargain or reward. It 
 is a matter of living in a new world— 
 Christ’s world—in which hatred of sin 
 becomes pity for the sinner, and our 
 bitter grudge and anger turn to a great 
 compassion for one who has become the 
 - slave of evil. Blessed is he who thus 
 loses his enmity in a great experience of 
 God’s compassion. Are we standing with 
 any harsh or censorious spirit before the 
 thought of one who has done us ill? 
 That is our opportunity. For we are 
 
 fo) 145 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 standing there before a door at which, 
 if we knock and seek for grace, it will 
 open out on the blessed country of the 
 
 fellowship of God the Father. 
 

 
 Cuapter VII 
 
 THE PURE IN HEART 
 

 
VII. The Pure in Heart o o 
 
 “ Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall 
 see God.” 
 
 HIS beatitude is like a delicate 
 
 flower. One has the feeling that 
 to peer too closely into its depths is to 
 destroy its beauty. Yet we must dis- 
 cover what it means to be pure in heart, 
 and what it means to see God, before we 
 can get into the secret, for both of these 
 are popularly misunderstood. 
 
 It is an amazing promise—“ they shall 
 see God.” It was the very last thing 
 that many of the hearers of Jesus expected 
 —or desired. There was an old saying 
 which had made a deep impression on 
 their minds that the vision of God is 
 something too awesome for human eyes. 
 “No man can see God and live.” The 
 very name of God for their forefathers 
 was too sacred for them to take upon 
 
 149 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 their lips in common speech. But Jesus 
 tells them quite simply and frankly that 
 if only they are pure in heart they should 
 see God; and that not only would they 
 not die, but He went so far as to say in 
 His whole teaching that without this 
 vision of God no man can really live. 
 What does He mean by seeing God ? 
 Where are we to look for God? Is this 
 vision of God an experience which can 
 happen to ordinary people living an 
 ordinary life? All these questions flash 
 into the mind. One thing is certain, 
 it was a matter of daily experience with 
 Jesus. He saw God day by day, and 
 lived in a world that was alive with His 
 presence. He did not need to go out of 
 the busy world to find God. We are 
 apt to imagine that when He left His 
 disciples and the crowd for the solitude 
 of the hillside, He was going apart to 
 listen for a voice and feel the touch of a 
 presence which He could not know in the 
 ordinary world of care and duty. That 
 is a wrong view to take. He went apart 
 150 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 to speak with God in prayer—in direct 
 communion; and to refresh the jaded 
 spirit that was wearied with the burden 
 of the world. The ship’s compass needs 
 to be taken into a quiet place where it 
 may be reset and recover its capacity to 
 be responsive to the touch of the mag- 
 netic currents. But it is in the ocean, 
 amid the daily buffeting of winds and 
 storms, that it is to find the contact with 
 these currents which will make it an 
 instrument of guiding. So it was with 
 Jesus. He was in daily touch with God. 
 Life was a parable in which He read God’s 
 message. The needs of the world were 
 a challenge in which He heard God’s 
 voice. Nature was a mirror in which He 
 saw the reflection of the Father’s love. 
 The very rain and sunshine falling on the 
 good and on the evil brought to His soul 
 the sense of the unfailing love. And 
 the deeper experiences—the bitter ex- 
 periences—were marked with a shining 
 pathway of duty in which He discerned 
 the Will of God. The whole of life was 
 
 151 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 sacramental of God’s love. Its vital 
 meaning was discovered through His 
 contact with God in it. He saw God in 
 everything ; that was the secret of life 
 for Jesus. Even when the Cross lifted 
 up its dark shadow and engulfed His 
 spirit in its black depths, He was heard to 
 cry “ Father”; for even there He found 
 God and knew His fellowship. He saw 
 God—because He was pure in heart. 
 Now, it is in this sense He means us to 
 see God. ‘The people of the Bible had 
 a way of describing the nearness of God 
 which we have lost. They spoke of the 
 company of angels. Their world, as 
 it seemed, was lit with the glint of these 
 angel wings. It was their way of describ- 
 _ ing the nearness of God. And we have 
 * lost it, for we can no longer think in their 
 terms. But our danger is, that in losing 
 the angels, or ceasing to look for them, 
 we should lose the thing for which the 
 angels stood—the presence of God in 
 daily life. The great business to which 
 Jesus calls us, is to recover this spiritual 
 
 152 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 experience—the sense of God in daily 
 life. ‘Till that happens the world we live 
 in is a poor place. It is a dismal change 
 to have lost the angels from the skies if in 
 their place we do not find God every- 
 where. It is lost ground to deny the 
 reality of sacred things and sacred places 
 if we do not go on to find all life sacred. 
 This is what Jesus calls us to do. He 
 calls us from the worship of a God 
 beyond us, and only breaking into life 
 now and then by special visitations, 
 into a reverence that finds God every- 
 where. ‘“ Behold I stand at the door and 
 knock,” He says. That is His message 
 about every experience. As we stand 
 in the world of nature and some scene 
 of beauty fills our eyes with its loveliness 
 and throws a sense of awe upon our 
 spirits, He is saying to us, “ Behold, I 
 stand at the door and knock.” ‘The 
 touch of beauty upon our spirits is the | 
 touch of His hand upon the lintel of our 
 hearts. It is the very same with the 
 needs of others. As we look at the world 
 
 153 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 of suffering and the appeal of its pitiful- 
 ness strikes into our hearts, He is saying 
 to us, “ Behold, I stand at the door and 
 knock.” When He calls us to enter 
 someone’s sad world with our help, He 
 is calling us to let Him into our own. 
 And have we never in other experiences 
 felt the same thing—in the strange appeal, 
 for instance, that some beautiful life has 
 made to us, or in the wonder of some 
 human love, say a man’s for his sick 
 wife, or a woman’s for her helpless 
 child; or, maybe, a child’s trust and 
 innocence sending into our soul a sense 
 of our defects and bringing the grey 
 shadows up out of the past. William 
 Canton, in his book about his little girl, 
 describes the feeling that shot through 
 him when suddenly at night she opened 
 her eyes and looked at him. 
 
 Heavens! How these steadfast eyes 
 Their eerie vigil kept. 
 Was it some angel in disguise 
 
 Who searched us while we slept ? 
 154 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 Who winnowed every sin, 
 Who tracked each slip and fall— 
 One of God’s spies, not babbykin, 
 Not babbykin at all. 
 
 Is there father, or mother, or anyone who 
 has ever looked into the heart of a child, 
 who has not felt it? And is there any 
 better way to comprehend the advent of a 
 child into a home than to hear in it again 
 this whisper of the God Who would come 
 in? 
 
 It is the very same with life’s darker . 
 experiences. What is a great sorrow 
 breaking into our peace but just an 
 opportunity for God ? Does not sorrow 
 open windows? It is in our sufferings 
 that we see. A big grief upsets our 
 values. New and precious things begin 
 to shine. And love, made strong through 
 sorrow, wells up in our life. We did not 
 realize till the friends were gone how we 
 loved them, and what a great place they 
 had in our hearts. But now we know. 
 - And what is that love which so wells up 
 
 155 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 in us? Is it not the love of God—the 
 very fountain of all human affection, 
 making itself known to us as our greatest 
 gift? ‘That is sorrow’s real compensa- 
 _ tion, and God is in it—the guarantee 
 of love’s permanence, so that even 
 when the angel of pain or grief throws 
 his shadow over our life, again it is, as 
 Watts shows in his picture, “ Love and 
 Death,” the Divine upon the doorstep of 
 our world. For as he shows us, even 
 Death with his face of gloom carries 
 behind him a light which is Divine. 
 And when he has passed in we can 
 see it,—though we may not see it till 
 then. 
 
 And most of all, do we not see God in 
 Jesus? That is what we mean by calling 
 Him the Son of God. It is nothing less 
 than this, that when we look at Him or 
 think of Him, or hear some challenge 
 of His echoing through our life, it is God 
 saying to us, “ Behold, I stand at the 
 door and knock.” ‘There is no situation 
 where we may not find Him. ‘There is no 
 
 156 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 circumstance but we can meet Him in it. 
 There is no joy in life which does not 
 come with the mark of His love upon it ; 
 so that we can feel that it comes, as it 
 were, direct from Him. ‘There is no 
 experience of life, however common- 
 place it be, which cannot be divinely lit 
 and thereby flash into meaning, as the 
 dark hillside flames into loveliness when 
 the sunlight’s on the heather. And it 
 is in the commonplace we are to look for 
 
 Him: 
 
 Not where the wheeling systems darken, 
 Or our benumbed conceiving soars ; 
 The drift of pinions, would we hearken, 
 
 Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. 
 
 For the whole earth is full of His glory. 
 “Whither shall I go from Thy presence, 
 or whither shall I flee from Thy spirit ? 
 If I make my bed in hell, Thou art there.” 
 That is, in point of fact, what gives us 
 hope in the hell we make for ourselves 
 through our shame and failure and 
 
 157 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 lovelessness, that God is in it; and in the 
 very remorse and guiltiness there is the 
 whisper of His voice trembling through 
 the shadows, “‘ Behold, I stand at the 
 ‘door: and knock.” For even in the 
 misery that visits the sinful life there is a 
 love that will not let us off, because He 
 will not let us go. 
 
 The fact is, that till we see God, there 
 is no real and intelligible meaning in 
 life. One thing is to be said about the 
 theory of the love of God—even if it be 
 only a theory—it is the only credible and 
 intelligible explanation of the world. 
 But it only becomes convincing when we 
 teally find that love working through 
 everything. Life for many people is a 
 thing which is good only in shreds and 
 patches: and for many others a thing of 
 sound and fury, signifying nothing. But 
 when you see God in it, and find Him 
 there, the world becomes the Father’s 
 House. It is heaven begun: we have 
 entered, even here on earth, the spiritual 
 country. 
 
 158 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 But how to see God in life—that is the 
 point. That is the great secret. It 
 needs the interpreting mind, as every- 
 thing does. Language itself would be 
 nothing without the interpreting mind. 
 You need the key to everything. We 
 make our own world by the heart we 
 carry through it. | A man with a guilty 
 conscience finds the light of a stern 
 judgment in the dawn that guides a 
 happy traveller upon his way. You have 
 got to be in the right attitude, says 
 Jesus, if you are going to see God. It is 
 like looking at a stained glass window. 
 If you would see its beauty and read its 
 message you have to be within. Out- 
 side it is only a dark blur. But stand 
 within, where the light falls through it, 
 and the dull glass blazes into a message 
 and a picture. So it is with God. Find 
 the right standpoint. See life with His 
 light shining through it. For every bit 
 of its texture has some imprisoned mes- 
 sage which His light can set free, if only 
 you have the eyes to see it. And this 
 
 159 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 is the right spirit, the true attitude—to 
 be pure in heart. 
 
 Now, what does Jesus mean by being 
 pure in heart? We often misconstrue 
 it. We think of a heart clean of all base 
 or impure desires. But it is more than 
 that. It means a heart that is simple 
 and sincere. Purity of heart is single- 
 mindedness of purpose in seeking the 
 truth and the will of God. It is, in a 
 word, sincerity, which means being open 
 to the light. ‘That is the mark of a really 
 Christian spirit. It is a strong thing to 
 say, but sincerity was the one thing which 
 of all others Christ demanded. He was - 
 always testing people for sincerity, for 
 purity of motive. When a man came to 
 Him gushing about his desire to follow 
 Him, Jesus flung to him a question, a 
 rebuff, which we can only understand as a 
 test of sincerity. Did the man want to 
 follow Him for what He was, or for some- 
 thing else? Did he want the truth, the 
 light, at all costs? Was he utterly open 
 to what Christ would teach him and 
 
 160 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 command him? The scribes and Phari- 
 sees failed just here. They were not 
 sincere. ‘This does not mean that they 
 were not good men, seeking righteous- 
 hess in their own way. We cannot help 
 being sorry for them sometimes. But the 
 flaw that ran through them, like a crack 
 through the crystal, was that they were 
 not sincere. They were not open to the 
 light from whatever quarter it came. 
 They wanted it through their own 
 windows. ‘They were not sincerely seek- 
 ing to be right at all costs, whatever the . 
 right might mean. They were seeking 
 to be right along the lines they were - 
 familiar with, and no other. They 
 wanted only so much truth as would not 
 conflict with their views. And so when 
 Jesus came, bringing a message of God 
 and a spirit aflame with His love, they 
 failed to see God in Him. ‘They would 
 not admit His truth into their hearts. 
 They would not believe they could be 
 mistaken. If only they had had the 
 open eye, ready to welcome truth and 
 
 bbe 161 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 love, they would have seen them even in 
 a peasant from Nazareth. They would 
 have welcomed them even though they 
 broke their religious system into bits. 
 But they were not sincere. Their hearts 
 were not clean of self-centred desires ; 
 so they missed God. ‘That was why the 
 publicans and the harlots were hailed 
 by’ Christ as likely to go into the King- 
 dom of Heaven before the self-righteous 
 good. Many of the former were sincere ; 
 they were open to the light. They 
 looked at Jesus with eyes that had no 
 prejudice, and minds without veil of 
 caste or custom. ‘They were not blinded _ 
 by their own self-righteousness or shut 
 up to a theory of how God would come 
 or how He would reveal Himself. Their 
 hearts, stained though they were with 
 evil, were open to love and friendship 
 and the beauty of holiness wherever they 
 found it, and for them Jesus shone. This 
 is a strange thing, but it is a fact that can 
 be paralleled in modern life. There are 
 people to-day whose lives may not be 
 
 162 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 very reputable, but for whom Jesus 
 shines in a way in which He does not shine 
 for others whose eyes are blinded by 
 theories about Him. It is a tragic fact 
 that many a real reform inspired by 
 human pity has found support among 
 those who stood aloof from religion, 
 while not a few within the churches have 
 proved its most bitter opponents. Re- 
 ligion has again and again been delivered 
 from its corruptions by the humane 
 instincts of those who were without. 
 Sins like pride and self-righteousness may 
 have a more deadly effect upon the soul 
 than the grosser vices of the body. 
 Father Dolling remarks on this from his 
 experiences in the Portsmouth slums. 
 “Our falls in Portsmouth,” he says, 
 “entailed no complete destruction of 
 character, hardly any disfigurement at 
 all. Boys stole because it was, the easiest 
 way of making a livelihood. Girls sinned 
 because their mothers had sinned before 
 them, unconscious of any shame in it. 
 The soul unquickened, the body alone is 
 | 163 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 depraved and therefore the highest part 
 is still capable of the most beautiful 
 development.” Does not that throw 
 some light on the value of sincerity? 
 Many of these people were open to the 
 light because they had no shelters of 
 respectability, nothing to make them feel 
 they were as good as they could be made, 
 nothing to make them imagine they had 
 found out the whole truth. ‘They were 
 * open to life, to all it might bring them, 
 and therefore they were open to God. 
 There are many kinds of insincerity. 
 There is the insincerity which comes of 
 prejudice. A man is prejudiced against 
 the truth and the light of God, because 
 of something he has heard or seen or 
 imagined. He refuses to let any light 
 which would make him widen his view 
 get past these blinkers. He is not sincere. 
 Another man may be _ prejudiced 
 against the light of God because of his 
 view of the universe. He starts out with 
 some theory about its being a bad world, 
 or a muddled world, or with some grudge 
 
 164 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 against God. When sorrow comes it 
 makes hint bitter or hard. He cannot 
 find God in it because he does not believe 
 God can be found there. He _ goes 
 through life unconsciously looking for 
 things which will confirm his theory, and 
 he finds them. If we think the world is 
 a bad world, a world without God, we will 
 find plenty of arguments to confirm it in 
 our mind. The very light will become 
 darkness. For the world reflects the 
 mood with which we face it. The 
 grumbler finds plenty of food for grumbl- 
 ing. It is a strange thing, but life is the 
 kind of experience that blinds our eyes to 
 God if we will not open them wide enough 
 to see Him. The world will harden the 
 heart which will not permit it to soften 
 It. 
 
 Some are prejudiced against seeing God 
 by their ideal of life. To see God would 
 shatter so many of their cherished dreams. 
 It would work so many changes in their 
 outlook. ‘To see God in the need of the 
 world would give them what someone 
 
 165 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 calls a “pain in the mind.” To find 
 God in some brother at their side would 
 mean smashing up a good many of their 
 social values. To hear God calling them 
 to a lowly way or to a hard duty would 
 mean pulling down their idols of success | 
 and changing the current of their 
 ambition. To follow Jesus in His love 
 for men as men, would open up many 
 strange friendships. It would alter their 
 whole world, and this they will not have ; 
 so they shut their eyes against the vision 
 of God. They are not sincere. Their 
 motives are all for self. They are not 
 out for the highest, for the life that Jesus 
 has made to shine. And their world 
 remains what it is—a place unlit by God; 
 their failures, no beautiful valleys where 
 life becomes rich with new meanings ; 
 their sorrows untouched by any radiance 
 of Divine companionship. They do not 
 want God’s way for them and life has 
 no Divine footprints, They do not 
 want the Christ-like spirit and life has 
 no power to shape them to His likeness. 
 
 166 
 
The Pure in Heart 
 
 But the pure in heart, the sincere, the 
 people who are open to life at every point 
 and who meet it with the faith that God 
 is in it and are seeking for nothing except 
 to find Him there, whatever His voice 
 may say or wherever His hand may 
 beckon—the pure in heart are blessed, 
 for they see God. 
 
 How do we reach this sincerity, this 
 purity of heart ? It may come in various 
 ways. It may come through disillusion- 
 ment and failure. God has various ways 
 of showing us how poor and shoddy are 
 our own ideals; how tawdry is the gilt 
 of earth’s sham successes; how mean 
 are the motives that have self at the heart 
 of them. Some bitter experience may 
 bring it, and in brokenness and weariness 
 we may be content to look up and see 
 God’s love break in. They tell us that 
 the man who is refining silver carries on 
 the process till the metal in his crucible is 
 so pure that its surface is a mirror in 
 which he can see the reflection of his face, 
 
 May it not be that God works like that, 
 167 
 
 ~ 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 refining us by life’s disillusionments and 
 disappointments till we are pure enough 
 to take on our hearts the reflection of 
 His face as He meets us in life. 
 
 But the pure heart is found where God 
 Himself is found, in the presence of 
 Jesus. He is the light—and light both 
 quickens the eyes to see and illumines 
 what we look at. That is what Christ 
 came to do for us and for our world—to 
 open our eyes and to light up our world. 
 We see God in Him and in life, by a 
 lamp of need and faith which Christ 
 kindles in our hearts. “He that fol- 
 loweth Me shall not walk in darkness, 
 but shall have the light of life.” 
 
 168 
 
Cuapter VIII 
 
 THE PEACEMAKERS 
 

 
VIII. The Peacemakers o o 
 
 “ Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall 
 be called the children of God.” 
 
 HERE are two main tasks to which 
 the people of the Kingdom are 
 called in these beatitudes. The one is 
 the showing of mercy; this is the task 
 
 of redemption. The other is the making BS 
 
 of peace; this is the creation of fellow- 
 ship. The world in which Jesus lived 
 had many features in it very like our own. 
 It was seething with strife of nearly 
 every kind—strife between the nations, 
 strife between the classes, strife between 
 the religious parties. It had its full 
 measure also of the conflicts that arise 
 between individuals, in homes, in families, 
 and in business life. The cauldron of 
 hatred was always threatening to boil 
 over. How men and women, with the 
 -animosities of centuries and agelong pre- 
 
 I7I 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 judices of training deep in their blood, 
 could be helped into a way of living 
 together in a real fellowship—that was 
 - His problem. And that is also ours. 
 Perhaps there is no word in all Christ’s 
 message that has been taken less seriously 
 than this. There has never been any 
 doubt in the minds of people that peace 
 among men is one of the fruits of the 
 Spirit of Christ. We have paid lip 
 service to this ideal more than to any 
 other. Yet there has been very little 
 success in its pursuit. Is it because we 
 have never fully believed in the possi- 
 bility of attaining it? How else, for 
 instance, can we account for the strange 
 fact that with the Gospels open before 
 us, there should be people for whom world 
 peace is a mere dream? A curious 
 scepticism on the subject infects them like 
 a plague. Its roots are difficult to trace, 
 but one of them is the idea that the 
 instinct of pugnacity is part of human 
 nature, and that therefore we must make 
 up our minds to treat war like a recurrent 
 
 172 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 disease which can never be stamped out. 
 “You cannot change human nature,” 
 say they. They do not realize that to 
 accept their shallow philosophy one must 
 abandon the whole Christian position 
 about man and his redemption. No! 
 There are two main reasons why strife 
 exists to-day as it always has done in the 
 past. 
 
 One is that we have never made peace- 
 making our serious task. We have never 
 really given our minds to it. When 
 friction has arisen, our idea has generally 
 been to patch things up and make some 
 kind of settlement. We have been con- 
 tent with enough to get the machinery 
 started and to keep life going—as men 
 on a journey will tinker up their motor- 
 car to make it run and carry them some- 
 how or other to their journey’s end. 
 We have never made peace, in the real 
 sense of the word—that is, in Christ’s 
 sense of the word—an ideal of our life, 
 a definite bit of our programme. We 
 have never felt urged to it, never, that is, 
 
 123 
 
area” 
 
 The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 felt a strained relationship as He felt it— 
 like a stab in the heart of a father watching 
 his wrangling children, and much more 
 concerned by the broken spirit of love 
 than with anything else that might get 
 broken. ‘Till we begin to feel strife as 
 
 _ something dark and terrible, a denial of 
 
 brotherhood, a shadow in the home, a 
 
 black cloud upon the world, and not 
 
 merely as an obstacle to our comfort or 
 our convenience, we will never find the 
 secret of peace—never enter into the 
 blessedness of the peacemaker. 
 
 Perhaps the deepest reason why peace 
 so eludes us is that only by the spirit of 
 the Kingdom can it be found. The 
 making of peace is a task for the men who 
 have the mind of Jesus and, in their hearts, 
 the resources of His Spirit. All the skill 
 and dexterity of diplomacy will not bring 
 peace to the nations if there be nothing 
 more. Peacemaking is more than a game 
 of international chess. There are forces 
 that make for strife, deep-rooted in 
 history and in men’s blood, which take 
 
 174 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 more to subdue them than the rose-water 
 of a sweet reasonableness. They need, 
 in truth, the powers of the heart which is 
 drawing upon God’s wisdom and love. 
 So Christ goes to the root of the matter 
 and makes the task of peacemaking the 
 burden of His own kind of men. What- 
 ever else is, or is not, open to us, here is a 
 task we must take a hand in. When the 
 natives of Samoa cast about for some way 
 of showing their gratitude to R. L. 
 Stevenson for his kindness to them, they 
 decided to build a road from his house 
 to the village. Nothing could have been 
 more symbolic of friendship than this 
 removal of obstacles from the path by 
 which he and they could come together. 
 They were smoothing the way of fellow- 
 ship. They called the new way the 
 “Road of the Loving Heart.” While 
 they were at it, a ship’s captain who was 
 visiting the island, asked what they were 
 doing. When they told him, his imagina- 
 tion was touched, and he took off his 
 coat saying, “I'd like to take a hand in 
 
 175 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 this job.” Surely that is how the work 
 of the peacemaker appeals to every 
 Christian. mind as imagination, in the 
 light of the Kingdom of God, sees the 
 glory of bringing men together. To 
 create fellowship, to remove obstacles 
 u ion it, that is our business. ‘The world 
 is at present like a family without the 
 family spirit. Its very intimacy is its 
 peril as it is its opportunity. ‘here are 
 forces in this close contact which will 
 prove high-explosive to rend us, if we 
 cannot find some way of so combining 
 them as to make them a power for good; 
 and, to put it on the lowest level, much 
 would be won for the world if half the 
 energy now spent in friction went to 
 drive the wheels of service. ‘This creation 
 of fellowship is the biggest task before 
 our generation. How can we make it 
 possible for men and women who at 
 present “‘shout to one another across 
 seas of misunderstanding” to ‘become a 
 united family ? Only the Spirit of Christ 
 can show the way. Into this He leads 
 
 176 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 His Church, and there is no better way 
 in which we can help to win men to a 
 Tecognition of the Spirit of our Lord. 
 *““ Blessed are the peacemakers, for they 
 shall be called the children of God.” 
 What is the method of the peacemaker ? 
 The word suggests a conciliator—one 
 who pours oil on troubled waters and 
 calms the heat of strife. A great deal 
 of peacemaking in a very real sense of 
 the word can be done by one who thus 
 
 carries a healing spirit. This is a world 
 
 Where great storms arise about very little 
 things. Much strife has its roots in the 
 friction of opposing temperaments. There 
 are people of whom we just make up our 
 minds that we do not like them. “Ido : 
 not like thee, Dr. Fell—the reason why, | 
 I cannot tell.” Some little thing, per-— 
 haps, has prejudiced us, as we say; which: 
 simply means that we have judged the 
 case before we were really in a position 
 to do so, and before, therefore, we had 
 any business to make up our minds. 
 Nothing then such people can do or say 
 
 12 177 
 
<, 
 
 The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 will win our approval or pass our censor- 
 
 jous eye. Sharp words beget sharp 
 words, and so the trouble spreads. And 
 then the peacemaker—he of the gentle, 
 reasonable spirit—may make peace, just 
 by enabling us to see things in their true 
 perspective. How small are the things 
 we dispute about! What motes they 
 are that have blurred our vision and 
 brought the red mist to our eyes! 
 “Every matter hath two handles,” said 
 Epictetus. “By the one it may be 
 carried. By the other not. If thy 
 brother do thee wrong take not this thing 
 by the handle ‘He wrongs me’ ; that 
 is the handle by which it may not be 
 carried. But take it rather by the handle 
 ‘He is my brother.? And thou wilt 
 take it by a handle by which it may be 
 carried easily.” That is the very spirit 
 
 of Jesus; and it suggests one method 
 ‘of peacemaking—which is to help people 
 ‘ to look from the point of view of others. 
 
 For just there the shoe pinches in the 
 rough roads we walk together. Our 
 
 178 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 minds grow self-centred. We think of 
 ourselves, our own hurt dignity, our 
 Own importance, and twist the tactless 
 deed, or even the most inoffensive remark, 
 into a deadly insult. There are various 
 little ways in which at such times we can 
 keep the peace, or make it. We can 
 refuse at all costs to be offended. We 
 can speak the quiet word, or pass off 
 the awkward moment with some kindly 
 humour. If it is we who seem to have 
 been insulted, in the last resort we can 
 ask ourselves whether there is any ground 
 for our brother’s annoyance. If there be 
 none, then we have to realize that he 
 is only to be pitied, and to be helped by 
 us when our help becomes possible. For 
 the man who hates another does himself 
 far more damage than any he may inflict 
 on his foe. He is spoiling his own spirit. 
 He is letting loose a madness in the brain 
 which will sting his soul with a fiery 
 disquiet. And therefore no one is so 
 much in need of our help. What did 
 Jesus really have-in view when He bade 
 
 179 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 us turn the other cheek and pray for 
 those who do us wrong? Was it only 
 to bid us beware lest we should become 
 like our enemy by adopting his methods ? 
 Was it not also this—that it is our business 
 to create for the man who has wronged 
 us the kind of atmosphere in which he 
 can become a better man—the atmosphere 
 in which the flame of anger cannot live. 
 Love has no more blessed ministry than 
 this—to keep down the frictions of life, to 
 disarm the spirit of anger, to so interpret 
 our fellows to each other that they can 
 find the footing of friendship, and no 
 ministry will produce a more immediate 
 fruit. It is our business to be reconcilers. 
 We are ambassadors for Christ, and as 
 such He often sends us to help men to 
 think kindly of one another ; for whenever 
 men are truly reconciled _ one another, 
 they are in a measure reconciled to Him. 
 
 But Christ means far more than this 
 when He speaks of peacemaking. Christ’s 
 peace is much more than the quiet and 
 frictionless harmony which comes through 
 
 180 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 the restraint of temper and the subduing 
 of pride. Peace is a very much deeper 
 thing than mere tranquillity. We long 
 for peace, but do we always realize its 
 true nature and by what strange roads 
 of disquiet it may have to come ? What 
 we take for peace is sometimes, in Christ’s 
 outlook, a poisonous thing, not the peace 
 of abundant and harmonious life, but the 
 peace of stagnation and death. There 
 may be a peace in a home which looks very 
 beautiful; but when you examine it 
 you may find it only means that the 
 members have ceased to concern them- 
 selves deeply enough about each other to 
 induce them to interfere. There may be 
 peace in a Church because the members 
 never get near enough in fellowship to 
 cause friction, and are not really keen 
 enough on the Kingdom of God to make 
 trouble about anything. There was a 
 peace in the old slave plantations, but 
 what kind of peace? Was it the peace 
 ofja real fellowship ? Was it not rather 
 one of force and fear? Was it the peace 
 
 181 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 of people really at one? We may gauge 
 its depth by their Civil War! | 
 
 What is the peace of which Jesus 
 speaks? It is that which is found when 
 each of us is one with the others in the 
 fellowship of a cause greater than all our 
 differences, when all conflict of ambitions 
 is swept away. It is the peace of a full, 
 strong river seeking the sea, whose strife 
 comes only of the passion of its movement, 
 and is resolved immediately and lost in 
 the fullness of its common life. It is 
 the peace which follows where wrong 
 which has been done is faced up to, and 
 so put away—as alone it can be put away 
 —by exposing it to the light of truth 
 and love. And it is that peace which in 
 the mind of Christ is always allied with 
 righteousness. “The work of righteous- 
 ness shall be peace,” said the prophet, 
 and that word holds to-day. Righteous- 
 ness is the root, and with the root the 
 making of the peace of which Jesus speaks 
 must begin. 
 v Dispeace may come from two things— 
 
 182 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 a wrong relation to God Who is our 
 Father, or, at the same time also, a wrong 
 relation to man who is our brother. 
 Where this is the root of disquiet, no 
 amount of good nature, or kindly feeling, 
 or patient temper, will produce anything 
 except an uneasy balance of opposing 
 forces—where peace would be at the best 
 only the deadly and ominous quiet of a 
 gathered storm. Quietness for the sake 
 of quietness is no real friend to peace. 
 The real peacemaker must get down to 
 the root. There are wounds which cannot 
 be healed with any balm. ‘They must 
 be opened to the light and air. The un- 
 veiling of wrong and the resort to moral 
 surgery is the making of peace, more surely 
 than that which appears to be the peaceful 
 way. “If ye walk in the light ye have 
 fellowship with one another.” ‘The real 
 peacemaker may often seem to be a 
 stirrer-up of strife. Peace may often 
 have to be broken on one level that it may 
 be made de more surely deeper down. It is 
 one of the great paradoxes of Christ— 
 
 183 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 one of the amazing things about him— 
 that He seemed, by His coming, to break 
 man’s peace. Matthew tells us that 
 when He was born “ Herod was troubled 
 and all Jerusalem with him.” Jesus knew 
 chis kind of thing would be one of the first 
 effects of His mission. “ Iam come,” He 
 said, “not to send peace but a sword.” 
 It seems hard to reconcile that with His 
 blessing on the peacemakers. “I am 
 come,’”’? He went on, ‘“‘to set a man 
 against his father and a woman against her 
 mother, and a man’s foes shall be they of 
 his own household.” The paradox can 
 be reconciled. The first effect of His 
 truth in any heart is to make it aware of 
 its own unworthiness and selfishness, and 
 to break its calm with adeep unrest. And 
 let a man, in a home where the spirit 
 of the world is strong, become truly 
 Christ-like, let the passion for goodness 
 and purity take possession of him, and a 
 light then begins to shine which shows 
 up the selfishness, the easy tolerance of 
 wrong, the vulgar ambition in which 
 
 184 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 the family had been content to live. 
 This man, with the truth of God in his 
 heart, has become a living conscience 
 which stings. He is like the picture by a 
 real artist hung alongside pictures of 
 vulgar taste, which necessarily and at 
 once begins to fight with them. The 
 man is alive to Christ and will often 
 even passively awaken revolt against that 
 new and challenging faith which has 
 troubled the stagnant waters of the home. 
 For the peace of a home like that is not 
 the peace of fellowship; it is only the 
 peace of moral indifference, against which 
 Christ is come to set Himself. 
 
 The same thing is true in the making of 
 peace between class and -class. The real 
 need is for righteousness. If men would 
 only learn to be tolerant, and just make 
 up their minds not to quarrel about things, 
 _ what a fine peace on earth there would be! 
 
 So we think. And a reasonable spirit 
 would do much; it is the first essential. 
 But it will not do everything. We some- 
 times speak of the need of goodwill to 
 
 185 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 reach a settlement. But what we often 
 mean by goodwill is just good temper and 
 a kindly spirit which hates a dispute. Yet 
 to try to bring peace to our social and 
 industrial life simply by kindly sentiment 
 is like trying to kill the poison of a swamp 
 by planting flowers which will disguise the 
 odour, instead of draining the soil. Good- 
 will, in the meaning of Jesus, is no mere 
 sentiment. It is good will—the will set 
 on what is right. It is the spirit that 
 wills good—and that the good of all—not 
 merely selfish personal advantage. It is 
 the spirit which can tolerate no wrong 
 with an easy mind. So long as there is 
 injustice, so long will there be dispeace. 
 All doctrines of revolutionary force, and 
 the men whose blood is bitten by them, 
 flourish in the rank soil of injustice. So 
 long as the poison of selfishness and wrong 
 values infects people, so long will the 
 wounds of friction fester and inflame. 
 The true peacemaker is he who is out 
 against injustice everywhere, whoever 
 may be its slave. That was Christ’s way 
 
 186 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 with social dispeace. He went to the 
 root of the trouble—on one occasion with 
 a word that stung and searched both the 
 soul of the man who thought he was 
 wronged, and the man who had wronged 
 him. “Who made Me a judge or a 
 divider over you?” He said. And then 
 He went on as much as to say, “ You are 
 never going to settle that kind of dispute 
 by any sort of compromise or arbitration 
 For you are both wrong. And the thing 
 that is breaking your peace, though you 
 do not know it, is not the wrong which 
 you think has been done. It is the 
 unbrotherly spirit, the covetous soul that 
 is out, not for good, but for gain.” 
 And Christ and His followers, seeking 
 this way of making peace, were counted as 
 people who “turned the world upside 
 down.” So they did, by creating revolu- 
 tions in the souls of men and distributing 
 all the nicely-balanced forces there that 
 kept things quiet. The true peacemaker 
 must be like His Master: he must lift his 
 voice against the things in our individual 
 
 187 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 and social life which are creating the unrest. 
 
 The same thing is true of peace among 
 the nations. We have still to learn that 
 peace cannot stand unless it is founded on 
 righteousness. A mere balance of power 
 will never make a peace that will last. A 
 shifty diplomacy that seeks to win a 
 triumph in the moves of policy, and get 
 its opponent into a corner, will never make 
 a peace that will last. Nothing but the 
 way of right, in scorn of consequence, will 
 do it. For the world’s peace, like that 
 between man and man, comes of a right 
 spirit among the nations, and a due care 
 for the rights of others. The real secret 
 of world-peace lies in a new outlook, anew 
 mind. It lies in the mind which gives a 
 new meaning to such words as “ national 
 prestige ”’ and “‘ honour,” and chases out 
 of the word “‘ empire ” every note of the 
 pride of dominion, to fill it with the pride 
 of service. Peace will come only in the 
 measure in which we learn to love our 
 country as Christ loved His, with a passion 
 for the place which it could hold in 
 
 188 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 God’s Kingdom and for the mission it 
 could serve in the world. How in this 
 spirit to deal with the tangled situations 
 that face us to-day is the difficult thing. 
 That is where the politician turns on 
 the apostle and asks questions. How can 
 this peace which comes of righteousness 
 find a home in the heart of Greek or 
 Turk? How is this outlook to be adopted 
 in the problems that arise in our shattered 
 Europe ? And such questions baffle. Yet 
 we must, in the first place, have the right 
 outlook before any successful attempt 
 can be made to solve them. Some 
 problems will never arise for the man or 
 the nation possessing something of the 
 mind of Christ. Some affronts they will 
 never see. ‘There is a way of righteous- 
 ness which, if we are on the look-out for 
 it, we shall find. The trouble often is 
 that we fail to see where that way breaks 
 off, till we are so far gone upon the other 
 that it takes a crisis to reveal it, and a 
 sacrifice, almost beyond what we can pay, 
 to get back to it again. 
 
 189 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 Wherever we may be, in whatever 
 situation, there is a Christian thing to do, 
 and the Christian thing is the final way 
 of peace. ‘That is as true for nations as it 
 is for classes or individuals. It may be 
 a hard way, or—what is often Just as 
 trying—a new way. There may be old 
 prejudices to shed, old possessions to 
 abandon ; but our work is to create the 
 spirit of fellowship in a world which is 
 coming to live together as it never lived 
 together before, and living so without 
 understanding the principles that alone ~ 
 make a common life possible. 
 
 That is the task for Christian men. Itis 
 one of the things Christ came todo. One 
 of the first things Paul hailed in’Him was 
 His power to reconcile the nations. “ Ye 
 who were once afar off are made nigh by 
 the blood of Christ,”? he wrote to the 
 Gentiles—he who was a Jew. “ Having 
 made peace through the blood of His 
 Cross.” ‘That was the way, and that was 
 the power. Jesus walked the way of the 
 Cross for the gathering of the nations 
 
 190 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 into the commonwealth of God. And 
 the peacemaker to-day must tread it too. 
 We must bring to the work of peace the 
 same forces of the spirit which we poured 
 into the channel of war—the initiative, 
 the unselfishness, the willingness to take 
 any place so long as the interests of the 
 Kingdom come first; and when we do 
 this, will there be any doubt of the issue ? 
 Can there indeed be God’sown peace among 
 the nations on lesser terms than these ? 
 But if we are to seek this peace, which 
 is the creation of a new fellowship, we 
 must be equipped for it, and that equip- 
 ment is nothing less than the peace of 
 God in our own hearts. The career of 
 St. Francis of Assisi is the story of a life 
 given to peacemaking—to all kinds of 
 reconciliations. One of his great anxieties 
 was lest his disciples, having given up 
 everything for a life of poverty, should 
 allow the hard, self-righteous spirit to 
 creep into their attitude to those who did 
 not live on their plane, and so make gulfs 
 where none need be. And his counsel to 
 
 QI 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 them as they went out to bring the touch 
 of Christ’s healing spirit into a divided 
 world is worth thinking over. ‘“ Our 
 life in the midst of the world, ” he said, 
 “ ought to be such that on hearing and 
 seeing us every one shall feel constrained 
 to praise our Heavenly Father. You pro- 
 claim peace. Have it in your hearts. Be 
 not an occasion of wrath or scandal to 
 anyone, but by your gentleness may all 
 be led to peace and concord.” We 
 proclaim peace ; we must have it in our 
 hearts. How can peace come there? 
 Only by our trampling down and casting 
 out whatever is against the rule of Jesus. 
 Only by our letting him lay low our false 
 values and subdue our animosities till we 
 see men with the eyes of God. Only as 
 the things for which men strive with one 
 another lose their power to hold us 
 prisoners, only as we see through the 
 illusions of power, and possession, and 
 pride, are we free to live in that spirit 
 of brotherhood which draws men into 
 fellowship. 
 
 192 
 
The Peacemakers 
 
 He drew a circle that shut me out, 
 Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. 
 
 But love and I had the wit to win. 
 We drew a circle that shut him in. 
 
 That is the victory which in this sundered 
 world, seething with all kinds of division, 
 makes peace and creates fellowship, be- 
 cause it conquers in the hearts of others the 
 things that divide. Nothing can so give 
 men the sense of God as a heart which is 
 radiant with this living peace. And 
 men are drawn to one another in the 
 measure in which they are drawn to Him. 
 
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Cuapter IX 
 
 THE PERSECUTED 
 

 
IX. The Persecuted > o 
 
 “Blessed are they which are persecuted for 
 righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven.” 
 
 | Roe beatitude is specially difficult 
 
 to understand because to-day it lies 
 so far beyond the experience of most 
 of us. It was a very vital word for the 
 times when it was spoken. The lives 
 of the disciples were spent in a perfect 
 maelstrom of trouble—brought on them- 
 selves through their loyalty to Christ, 
 There were at least twelve to whom He 
 was speaking these words of whom only 
 one, so far as we can tell, died in his bed, 
 whilst several went to the gibbet, like 
 their master. In such ways they came 
 to understand what Christ meant by the 
 joy of the persecuted, and so they wrote 
 down this beatitude in its various forms, 
 and held it fast because they had come 
 
 197 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 to live by it and found that it was 
 true. 
 
 If we are frank with ourselves we will 
 admit that this kind of blessedness does 
 not come to the average professing Chris- 
 tian of the twentieth century. This 
 fact ought to give us furiously to think. 
 Are we not missing here something vital 
 in the experience of Christ, and missing 
 it because something vital is wanting 
 in our loyalty to Him? One thing is 
 clear: Christ expected that loyal disciple- 
 ship would get people into trouble. It is 
 worth noting that this word comes at 
 the end of the picture of the blessed life. 
 It is as if Christ said when He had finished 
 His description of it, “I have a warning 
 to give you. If you are this kind of man, 
 if you are pure in heart, and poor in 
 spirit, and are out for righteousness with 
 a hunger in your soul that is like an 
 undying fire, you are going to get into 
 all sorts of trouble. You will raise a 
 storm. You will get people up in arms 
 against you. Evil will try to crush you. 
 
 198 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 You will make many enemies.” That 
 was the kind of thing He was constantly 
 saying, and saying with an insistence that 
 makes us of to-day search our hearts. 
 * Beware when all men speak well of you. 
 Beware lest at that point you have hidden 
 your light, or trimmed the edge of truth.” 
 “ Behold,” He said again, “I send you 
 forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” 
 Of course it might be objected that we 
 are living in days when the Spirit of 
 Christ has so far conquered the world 
 as to make persecution a thing of the past ; 
 that the world has learned to tolerate 
 contrary opinions: that we have advanced 
 to a greater trust in the power of truth, 
 if not to a larger charity towards oppo- 
 nents. It may also be said that a good 
 many of the persecutions of history were 
 needlessly aggravated ; that some of the 
 martyrs were bigots of obtuse temper, 
 using language that might provoke their 
 foes. One phrase in this beatitude should 
 make us careful, if we meet with dislike, 
 before we lay the flattering unction to our 
 
 ee 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 souls that we are of those whom Christ 
 calls “blessed.” It is the phrase “ for 
 righteousness’ sake.”” Christ is very clear 
 about this: ‘‘ for My sake,” He says again. 
 There are Christian people who are dis- 
 liked, not for their Christianity, but for 
 the want of it; not because they are 
 right, but because they are loveless or 
 tactless. ‘They ask for trouble by a pug- 
 nacious temper, or a rude manner, or a 
 bitter tongue. It is not their goodness 
 which hurts; it is their pride and their 
 hardness: these prevent that goodness 
 winning a way for Christ. ‘Their Chris- — 
 tianity has not penetrated deeply enough 
 to thaw their own heart ; their influence 
 is not a breath of warm life from the land 
 of sunshine, but a blast from an icefield. 
 
 When all that, however, is said, it is 
 clear that even in these humaner days 
 a real loyalty to Christ will bring perse- 
 cution. ‘The thumbscrew and the rack 
 have their refined modern equivalents. 
 However high the world may reach in 
 the standard of life, those who are follow- 
 
 200 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 ing Christ will always be a little way 
 ahead, holding out for the impossible. 
 However far on we move in moral or 
 spiritual advance, Jesus will always be 
 ahead of us. We have learned enough of 
 His supremacy to know that every new 
 step forward is but a discovery of some 
 fresh beam of His truth which was waiting 
 to break out. So the Cross “leads the 
 generations on.” It is a question whether 
 the true Church can ever hope to be any- 
 thing but an unpopular remnant, a com- 
 pany of fools for Christ’s sake. 
 
 Now a living goodness which has in it 
 the salt of Christ’s message will often do 
 one of two things: it will either convert 
 the evil heart or rouse it to battle. A 
 live Christian spirit is a real rebuke to 
 wrong wherever it meets it. A Chris- 
 tian man is an incarnate conscience in 
 the community in which he lives. He 
 lets in a flood of light. He introduces 
 a new standard of values. One of the 
 reasons why Christ was hated was just 
 that He was what He was. His life was 
 
 201 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 a silent judgment seat. He quickened 
 men’s consciences, and many a ghost 
 which they imagined had been laid for 
 ever, He set walking through the rooms 
 of memory. Men saw themselves; and 
 the sight was not flattering to pride. 
 
 There came a man—whence, none could tell, 
 Bearing a touchstone in his hand ; 
 
 And tested all things in the land 
 
 By its unerring spell. i 
 And lo, what sudden changes smote 
 The fair to foul, the foul to fair! 
 Purple nor ermine did he spare, 
 Nor scorn the dusty coat. 
 
 But though they slew him with a sword 
 And in a fire his touchstone burned, 
 
 Its doings could not be o’erturned, 
 
 Its undoings restored. 
 
 When the light of Christ begins to move 
 in a man’s soul either he submits and comes 
 to Him, or else he begins to hate Him, 
 to feel he must get rid of Him, because 
 
 202 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 there is no peace in His presence. The 
 persecution of Christ is the finest tribute 
 
 to His influence. ‘There must have been / 
 
 something about His message and person- 
 ality very powerful and penetrating, when 
 men combined all their forces, both civil 
 and ecclesiastical, and sunk the animosities 
 of centuries, in order to put Him to death. 
 That we should be hated by some people 
 would be a big testimony to the vitality 
 of our Christianity. It would mean 
 that our goodness was alive enough to 
 quicken the evil in their resentment. 
 The fever in the sick body shows the 
 presence of the poison, but it shows also 
 that healing forces are active in an effort 
 to cure. “ ‘The Kingdom of Heaven,” 
 said Jesus, “‘ is like leaven which a woman 
 hid in ten measures of meal.”? He had 
 often seen it in His home, fomenting, 
 bubbling through the still and lifeless 
 dough. The process of leavening the 
 life of the world will always be like that. 
 It will create unrest. It will make dis- 
 peace. Good and evil, truth and false- 
 
 203 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 hood cannot mix. We often think of 
 love as a reconciling power, pouring oil 
 on troubled waters, cooling friction. And 
 it is so, if its way be not obstructed by 
 evil. But the love of Jesus is a moral 
 passion which will make no terms with 
 evil, and the more deeply it reaches, the 
 more it demands the clean heart and 
 the right spirit. In the face of wrong, 
 true love is a consuming fire. The Cross 
 of Christ is the measure of a love which 
 stood the test of hatred and pain and death, 
 but it is also the measure of love’s 
 antagonism to evil. 
 
 And it is not always the antagonism 
 of those who do not see the Christian 
 values which we have to expect. It is 
 that rather of those who have come to 
 see, and whose antagonism is the reflection 
 of their own internal conflict. ‘* Con- 
 sider,” says the writer to the Hebrews, 
 “‘Him who endured such contradiction 
 of sinners against Himself”; or as it is 
 translated with equal authority, “ against 
 themselves.”’ Jesus created an inward 
 
 204. 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 conflict of which He had to bear the brunt, 
 and there is no exemption from this for 
 His disciples. 
 
 - But, apart from this, selfishness and 
 other forms of evil have a way of entrench- 
 ing themselves in all sorts of interests 
 and fighting there to retain their hold. 
 There is the money interest which a 
 live Christianity will threaten in various 
 directions. The story of the rise of 
 persecution in the book of Acts shows that 
 interest as very much alive. When Paul 
 began to preach in Ephesus—the centre 
 of the worship of the goddess Diana—the 
 people saw at once to what his doctrine 
 was leading. It meant the overthrow 
 of that worship, and the worship gone, 
 its trade gone also. There would be no 
 work for the image makers, and the silver- 
 smiths would lose their custom, so at 
 once there was opposition. And have we 
 not to-day the same kind of opposition 
 to meet? What, for instance, of the 
 trafic in drink? How much of the 
 Opposition to temperance reform is due 
 
 205 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 to the money interest? The traffic, 
 too, in arms? ‘The war-spirit has several 
 roots which will need to be cut before 
 there can be any assurance of peace. And 
 one of the roots is the money sunk in 
 armament factories. So long as there 
 are people whose dividends and profit 
 depend on keeping alive the fear of war, 
 the movement towards peace among the 
 nations will have its foes, and determined 
 opposition will face those who embark 
 on this movement. 
 
 But other kinds of vested interests 
 stand in the way of righteousness. ‘There 
 is the interest of governments. ‘The old 
 battle between Church and State has 
 gone on for centuries. Sometimes the 
 fight dies down for want of some definite 
 moral issue. But again and again a 
 living Christianity will be found to clash 
 with the policy of the State. Repeatedly 
 the followers of Christ have had to 
 take their stand against it. They have 
 been called unpatriotic—traitors to their 
 country—the foes of order and security. 
 
 206 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 They will be called so again, whenever, 
 in response to the higher way of Jesus, 
 they feel compelled to refuse what the 
 State may ask, and persecution will follow. 
 The interests of ordered government 
 helped to bring Christ before Pilate. He 
 was threatening the supremacy of the 
 Roman Empire, so it was alleged. “ If 
 you let this man go, you are not Cesar’s 
 friend.” He was called unpatriotic by 
 the people of His own nation, for His 
 message was that of God’s love, not for 
 them alone, but for all men. He taught 
 that higher patriotism which consists not 
 in masterful dominion but in lowly 
 service, and it sharpened the nails that 
 fastened Him to His Cross. 
 
 Sometimes the instrument of perse- 
 cution has been the Church itself. Reli- 
 gion becomes organized. The practice 
 of Christianity becomes a mere con- 
 vention. Its faith that was once the 
 fire of a living experience becomes har- 
 dened into a creed, into a form of words 
 which is insufficient for the living spirit 
 
 207 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 of truth, and may even deny the new 
 light that has dawned. Christ taught us 
 that the Spirit would lead us into new 
 truth and unfold the deeper meanings 
 of His message, and when that Spirit 
 demands a new statement to shake the 
 truth free of the husk and express a 
 living experience, antagonism is sure to 
 arise. Conventional people do not like 
 to feel the breath of reality sweeping 
 through customs which have grown dear, 
 or to be jolted out of their familiar ruts 
 of thought by the making of new tracks. © 
 The commonplaces of to-day were the 
 heresies of yesterday but there is nothing 
 people so easily forget. Less than a 
 hundred years ago George Canning de- 
 scribed to a listening House of Commons 
 how he had gone to a little Presbyterian 
 church in London and heard a phrase’ 
 which had haunted him ever since; it 
 was “the Fatherhood of God.” Not 
 much longer ago, for proclaiming that 
 truth, men were hunted from their 
 pulpits; and yet it is the very centre 
 208 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 of Christ’s message. Thus the Spirit of 
 God leads us on. Jesus is ever being 
 rediscovered, but wherever His truth’ 
 leads into new territory, and opens up 
 new aspects, there will be bitterness 
 and conflict. 
 
 And what of business and commercial 
 life to-day? What of our social con- 
 ventions? What of the ways of thinking 
 in which we look out at one another 
 through mists of suspicion or fear? 
 pons! of: God,?? Children’ of “the 
 Father,” “Brethren for whom Christ 
 died ”—these are phrases which have in 
 them tremendous explosive power, and 
 they cut right across many of our con- 
 ventional social attitudes and business 
 relationships. And further, and wider, 
 “neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond 
 nor free, but all one in Christ Jesus.” 
 There—in that—is another great seed 
 of Christian thinking which is bound to 
 rend the rocks of old prejudices, and make 
 tremendous changes in our international 
 outlook, and our ways of treating other 
 
 sy 209 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 nations. And the changes which this 
 new outlook demands cannot be made 
 without trouble. The way of a Christian 
 man can never be easy to find or to follow. 
 He will be here and there up against 
 methods and practices which are incon- 
 sistent with his faith. How far he can 
 acquiesce in a system which he may 
 feel to be unchristian is a matter for a 
 man’s own conscience. No one can 
 shut his eyes to the fact that a radical 
 Christianity would involve changes. The 
 difficulty is that these, made suddenly, 
 would produce dislocations which are 
 themselves disastrous. To use a familiar 
 illustration, we are in the position of a 
 railway company which has to change 
 its method of working a big station and 
 at the same time keep the train service 
 running at full pressure. It is only bit 
 by bit that the Christian outlook can 
 become supreme and come to regulate 
 the common life. Yet every pioneer must 
 be ready to face the hazard of pioneering. 
 The way forward is always, for the first 
 
 2I0 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 people who take it, both dangerous and 
 lonely. He who would follow Christ 
 must be prepared to take risks and face 
 individual loss) He must be ready to 
 walk alone, to face the disapproval of a 
 majority, to become a fool for Christ’s 
 sake. | 
 
 The way of Christ to-day may not bring | 
 the old form of persecution, but who shall 
 say that the modern way is any less hard ? 
 There are people who would face death 
 and physical suffering for their faith more 
 readily than the chill of social ostracism, 
 the sneer of the club or of the drawing- 
 room, the scorn which dismisses them 
 as cranks. 
 
 So he died for his faith. That was fine: 
 More than most of us do. 
 
 But say this, can you add to this line, 
 That he lived for it too? 
 
 But to live every day, to live out 
 All the truth that he meant ; 
 
 While his friends met his conduct with doubt 
 And the world with contempt. 
 
 211 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 “They that live godly shall suffer perse- 
 cution,”’ said the apostle, and he had tried 
 it. There are points where our ways 
 diverge. There are scruples to which a 
 Christian man will bow which are folly 
 to him who has not heard the still small 
 voice. ‘There are sacrifices a Christian 
 man will make that look very foolish in 
 the face of world-glittering values and 
 of what it calls success. ‘There are things 
 we will do that appear quixotic, where 
 we would fain justify ourselves but cannot, 
 and we have just got to bear it. Perhaps - 
 we never realize how deeply ingrained 
 is the fear of public scorn, or the craving 
 for public approval, till we are called to 
 a way which runs right up against the 
 ordinary thinking of those around us, 
 and we have to go out on that way alone. 
 And as we look at it, it is hard enough 
 to realize that it is a way of “‘ blessedness.”? 
 What then did Jesus mean by calling it 
 that? What did He mean when He 
 bade us rejoice and be exceeding glad in 
 taking it? It is a matter of experience, 
 212 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 But one or two things become clear when 
 we think it out. 
 
 For one thing, the way of truth and | 
 righteousness is its own blessedness. We 
 say that often enough to ourselves. It 
 is a truism. But we do not realize it till 
 all the other props which support us 
 are down, till all the other approvals 
 in which we have sunned our souls are 
 gone, and we are left alone with nothing 
 but the cold, dark way, unlit and starless. 
 Then, as we walk it, a light begins to shine, 
 and a music is heard within which was 
 drowned and dumb when we were listen- 
 ing for the applause of others. The 
 Christian way is like putting out to sea. 
 We may believe that the great waters will 
 carry us, and the great winds move us, 
 and that the ship on which we sail is sea- 
 worthy. But we do not know the real 
 assurance and the triumph of the great 
 adventure till we have gone out and taken 
 the risk. It is a real fact that Chris- 
 tianity never becomes vital in its joy and 
 power for a man till he does something 
 
 213 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 by way of venturing everything on it. 
 Then when he steps out in his lonely 
 independence, with nothing but God for 
 his portion, he finds a reality in religion 
 that he had never experienced before. 
 See what persecution did for the Early 
 Church! It was when the Early Church 
 was hunted and harried by Saul and 
 those like him, that it really began to live 
 on its faith and to grow into power. 
 The comfortable nest of fellowship in 
 which they had nourished their souls was 
 broken and the members were scattered © 
 abroad. But in that scattering they 
 carried the truth and the faith into other 
 parts of the world, and on their journeys 
 realized for the first time the amazing 
 resources of their Lord. For as they went 
 He joined Himself to their company, and 
 they found in His presence that their 
 faith was not a mere hothouse plant 
 which could only be kept alive in 
 shelter, but a living thing whose roots 
 went down into the everlasting springs. 
 Faith grew the stronger when nothing 
 
 214 ‘ 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 but the strand of faith bound them to 
 Him. ‘The presence of Christ became 
 real, as it always does, to those who trust 
 Him in a great loyalty that has nothing 
 else to trust. Persecution, scorn, dis- 
 approval—the cold winds that seem to 
 threaten faith—are just the things which 
 strengthen it. Faith is a torch which 
 shines the brighter the more it is shaken. 
 Said the great Tertullian, “‘ We are made 
 - the more, the more you mow us down.” 
 But there is more. ‘There is the : 
 comfort of belonging to a great succession. 
 “For so persecuted they the prophets 
 that were before you.” It is a great 
 thing to carry on a noble tradition. It 1s 
 the kind of pride which sleeps in every 
 patriotic heart and has helped many a 
 man to be strong in a strange land, on 
 the battlefield, in the desert. ‘The Chris- 
 tian man’s tradition yields a far deeper 
 pride. No lineage is nobler than his: 
 he belongs to the order of faith, to the 
 succession of the saints and prophets, to 
 the line of the spiritual pioneers, whose 
 
 215 
 
The Key to the Kingdom 
 
 Captain is Christ Himself. He is break- 
 ing ground, he will say to himself, in 
 which, for people yet unborn, the seeds 
 of truth and right will grow. He is 
 lighting a fire which will yet illumine 
 the world. He is a pioneer in new ter- 
 ritory which Christ will call His own. 
 The outpost which he is holding will yet 
 become the centre of a colony. The 
 thought he thinks, and for which he 
 suffers to-day, will be the food on which 
 the world will live to-morrow. The vice 
 against which he alone stands to-day will 
 take its death-blow from the wound 
 which he receives in fighting it. That 
 is the message of the Cross. 
 
 It is from the want of all this that the 
 Church is suffering to-day. We lack 
 the something which the opposition of 
 the world would give us. No one sighs 
 for the old days of the bloody perse- 
 cutions, but the Church is God’s pioneer 
 into new truth, into new places of 
 conquest. Is it not because she is not 
 vital enough to be dangerous that the 
 
 216 
 
The Persecuted 
 
 world so often treats her with indifference? 
 When she begins to stand up te evil, to 
 speak out fearlessly against it, and to take 
 her Christianity seriously, the world will 
 take her seriously, and she will begin to 
 count. It will heed her then, if only to 
 try in some form or other to put her down. 
 That will be the greatest compliment 
 which it can pay her—except to open its 
 mind to her message. “ Then,” says 
 Jesus, “rejoice and be exceeding glad.” 
 The world’s persecution of the truth has 
 always preceded its submission to it. 
 The day of suffering and opposition is 
 the dawn of conquest. When you are 
 walking the way of the Cross, you are on 
 your way to the Resurrection and the 
 Throne. And “ Lo, I am with you alway, 
 
 even unto the end.?”? 
 
 Tue Enp, 
 

 

 

 

 

 
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