nd outward distress is glorified into the sorrow which
is blessed. A drop or two of this tincture, the mourning which comes
from poverty of spirit, slipped into the cup of affliction, clears and
sweetens the waters, and makes them a tonic bitter. Brethren, if our
outward losses and disappointments and pains help us to apprehend, and
are accepted by us in the remembrance of, our own unworthiness, then
these, too, are God's sweet gifts to us.

One word more. This mourning is perfectly compatible with, and indeed is
experienced in its purest form only along with, the highest and purest
joy. I have been speaking about the indispensable necessity of such
sadness for all noble life. But let us remember, on the other hand, that
no one has so much reason to be glad as he has who, in poverty of
spirit, has clasped and possesses the wealth of the Kingdom. And if a
man, side by side with this profound and saddened sense of his own
sinfulness, has not a hold of the higher thing--Christ's righteousness
given to penitence and faith--then his knowledge of his own unworthiness
is still too shallow to inherit a benediction. There is no reason why,
side by side in the Christian heart, there should not lie--there is
every reason why there should lie--these two emotions, not mutually
discrepant and contradictory, but capable of being blended together--the
mourning which is blessed, and the joy which is unspeakable and full of
glory.

II. And now a word or two with regard to the consolation which such
mourning is sure to receive.

It is not true, whatever sentimentalists may say, that all sorrow is
comforted and therefore blessed. It may be forgotten. Pain may sting
less; men may betake themselves to trivial, or false, unworthy, low
alleviations, and fancy that they are comforted when they are only
diverted. But the sorrow meant in my text necessarily ensures for every
man who possesses it the consolation which follows. That consolation is
both present and future.

As for the present, the mourning which is based, as our text bases it,
on poverty of spirit, will certainly bring after it the consolation of
forgiveness arid of cleansing. Christ's gentle hand laid upon us, to
cause our guilt to pass away, and the inveterate habits of inclination
towards evil to melt out of our nature, is His answer to His child's
cry, 'Woe is me, for I am undone!' And anything is more probable than
that Christ, hearing a man thus complain of himself before