d resent that? Oh, brethren, we need, for our right
relation to our fellows, a deeper conviction of our sinfulness before
Him. Many of us are blessed with natural tendencies to meekness, but
these are insufficient. Many of us seek to cultivate this grace from
true and right, though not the deepest, motives. Let us reinforce them
by that which comes from the consideration of the place which this
Beatitude holds in the wreathed chain, and remember that 'poverty of
spirit' and 'mourning' must precede it.

Now, _there_ is a sharp test for us Christian people. If I have learned
myself, and have penitently received God's pardon, I shall be meek with
God and with man. If I am not meek with God and with man, have I
received God's pardon? One great reason why so many of you Christian
people have so little consciousness of God's forgiving mercy, as a
constant joy in your lives, is because you have so little obeyed the
commandment, 'Be ye imitators of God, and walk in love, as God hath
forgiven and loved us.'

III. And now, lastly, note whither this meekness leads.

'They shall inherit the earth.' The words are quoted, as I have already
said, from one of the psalms, and in the Psalmist's mouth they had, I
suppose, especial reference to Israel's peaceful possession of the
promised land, which in that Old Dispensation was made contingent on the
people's faithfulness. In that aspect, and looking at this Sermon on the
Mount as the programme of the King Himself, what a bucket of cold water
such words as these must have poured on the hot Messianic expectations
of the carnal Jew! Here was a King that did not expect to win back the
land by armed rebellion against the Roman legions, but said, 'Be meek,
and you will truly possess it, whether there is a Pilate in the
procurator's house at Caesarea or not.'

But for us the words have a double reference, as all the promises
annexed to these Beatitudes have. They apply to the present; they apply
to the future. And that is no mere looseness of interpretation, eking
out an insufficient verification of them here upon earth by some dim
hopes of a future fulfilment, but it flows from the plain fact that the
gifts which a man receives on condition of his being a true disciple are
one and the same in essence, and only differ in degree, here and
hereafter. Circumstances alter, no doubt, and there will be much in that
heavenly state unlike that which we experience here. But the essence of
Christian