. righteousness from the God of
his salvation.' The certainty that he will do so rests at last on the
faithfulness of God, who cannot but respond to all desires which He
inspires. They are premonitions of His purposes, like rosy clouds that
run before the chariot of the sunrise. The desire to be righteous is
already righteousness in heart and will, and reveals the true bent of
the soul. Its realisation in life is a question of time. The progressive
fulfilment here points to completeness in heaven, when we shall behold
His face in righteousness, and be satisfied when we awake in His
likeness.

V. Again we have a grace which is exercised to men. Mercy is more than
meekness. That implied opposition, and was largely negative. This does
not regard the conduct of others at all, and is really love in exercise
to the needy, especially the unworthy. It embraces pity, charitable
forbearance, beneficence, and is revealed in acts, in words, in tears.
It is blessed in itself. A life of selfishness is hell; a life of mercy
is sweet with some savour of heaven. It is the consequence of mercy
received from God. Poverty of spirit, sorrow, hunger after righteousness
bring deep experiences of God's gentle forbearance and bestowing love,
and will make us like Him in proportion as they are real. Our
mercifulness, then, is a reflection from His. His ought to be the
measure and pattern of ours in depth, scope, extent of self-sacrifice,
and freeness of its gifts. A stringent requirement!

Our exercise of mercy is the condition of our receiving it. On the
whole, the world gives us back, as a mirror does, the reflection of our
own faces; and merciful men generally get what they give. But that is a
law with many exceptions, and Jesus means more than that. Merciful men
get mercy from God--not, of course, that we deserve mercy by being
merciful. That is a contradiction in terms; for mercy is precisely that
which we do not deserve. The place of mercy in this series shows that
Jesus regarded it as the consequence, not the cause, of our experience
of God's mercy. But He teaches over and over again that a hard,
unmerciful heart forfeits the divine mercy. It does so, because such a
disposition tends to obscure the very state of mind to which alone God's
mercy can be given. Such a man must have forgotten his poverty and
sorrow, his longings and their rich reward, and so must have, for the
time, passed from the place where he can take in God's gift. A lif