n back and again shut up in their
captivity. If we are able, as we are in some measure, to break the
bondage of evil in ourselves, we are not able to complete our
emancipation by any skill, effort, or act of ours. We must be content to
receive the blessing. There is no loom of earth which can weave, and no
needle that man's hands can use which can stitch together, the pure
garment that befits a soul. We must be content to take the robe of
righteousness which Jesus Christ has wrought, and to strip off, by His
help, the ancient self, splashed with the filth of the world, and
spotted by the flesh: and to 'put on the new man,' which Christ, and
Christ alone, bestows.

As for the future fulfilment of this promise--desire will live in
heaven, desire will dilate the spirit, the dilated spirit will be
capable of fuller gifts of God-likeness, and increased capacity will
ensure increased reception. Thus, through eternity, in blessed
alternation, we shall experience the desire that brings new gifts and
the satisfying that produces new desires.

Dear friends, all that I have been trying to say in this sermon is
gathered up into the one word--'that I may be found in Him, not having
my own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the
righteousness which is of God by faith.'

THE FIFTH BEATITUDE

'Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.'--MATT. v.
7.

THE divine simplicity of the Beatitudes covers a divine depth, both in
regard to the single precepts and to the sequence of the whole. I have
already pointed out that the first of the series Is to be regarded as
the root and germ of all the subsequent ones. If for a moment we set it
aside and consider only the fruits which are successively developed from
it, we shall see that the remaining members of the sequence are arranged
in pairs, of which each contains, first, a characteristic more inward
and relating to the deep things of individual religion; and, second, a
characteristic which has its field of action in our relations to men.
For example, the 'mourners' and the 'meek' are paired. Those who 'hunger
and thirst after righteousness' and the 'merciful' are paired. 'The pure
in heart' and 'the peacemakers' are paired.

Now that sequence can scarcely be accidental. It is the application in
detail of the great principle which our Lord endorsed in its Old
Testament form when He said that the first great commandment, the love
of God, h