esented with general summaries; as, for example, the summary
of the Galilean ministry in the previous verses, and the grand
procession of miracles which follows in chapters viii. and ix. It is
therefore no violent supposition that here too the evangelist has
brought together, as specimens of our Lord's preaching, words which were
not all spoken at the same time. His description of the Galilean
ministry in ch. iv. 23, as 'teaching' and 'healing,' governs the
arrangement of his materials from chapter v. to the end of chapter ix.
First comes the sermon, then the miracles follow.

The Beatitudes, as a whole, are a set of paradoxes to the 'mind of the
flesh.' They were meant to tear away the foolish illusions of the
multitude as to the nature of the kingdom; and they must have disgusted
and turned back many would-be sharers in it. They are like a dash of
cold water on the fiery, impure enthusiasms which were eager for a
kingdom of gross delights and vulgar conquest. And, no doubt, Jesus
intended them to act like Gideon's test, and to sift out those whose
appetite for carnal good was uppermost. But they were tests simply
because they embodied everlasting truths as to the characters of His
subjects. Our narrow space allows of only the most superficial treatment
of these deep words.

I. The foundation of all is laid in poverty of spirit. The word rendered
'poor' does not only signify one in a condition of want, but rather one
who is aware of the condition, and seeks relief. If we may refer to
Latin words here, it is mendicus rather than _pauper_, a beggar rather
than a poor man, who is meant. So that to be poor in spirit is to be in
inmost reality conscious of need, of emptiness, of dependence on God, of
demerit; the true estimate of self, as blind, evil, weak, is intended;
the characteristic tone of feeling pointed to is self-abnegation, like
that of the publican smiting his breast, or that of the
disease-weakened, hunger-tortured prodigal, or that of the once
self-righteous Paul, 'O wretched man that I am!' People who do not like
evangelical teaching sometimes say, 'Give me the Sermon on the Mount.'
So say I. Only let us take all of it; and if we do, we shall come, as we
shall have frequent occasion to point out, in subsequent passages, to
something uncommonly like the evangelical theology to which it is
sometimes set up as antithetic. For Christ begins His portraiture of a
citizen of the kingdom with the consciousness of wa