they are laying up materials
for a tremendous explosion some day.

But it is a very different temper that Jesus Christ has in view here,
and I need only ask you to do again what we have had occasion to do in
the previous sermons of this series--to link this characteristic with
those that go before it, of which it is regarded as being the bright and
consummate flower and final outcome. No man can bring to others that
which he does not possess. Vainly will he whose own heart is torn by
contending passions, whose own life is full of animosities and
unreconciled outstanding causes of alienation and divergence between him
and God, between him and duty, between him and himself, ever seek to
shed any deep or real peace amongst men. He may superficially solder
some external quarrels, but that is not all that Jesus Christ means. His
peacemakers are created by having passed through all the previous
experiences which the preceding verses bring out. They have learned the
poverty of their own spirits. They have wept tears, if not real and
literal, yet those which are far more agonising--tears of spirit and
conscience--when they have thought of their own demerits and foulnesses.
They have bowed in humble submission to the will of God, and even to
that will as expressed by the antagonisms of man. They have yearned
after the possession of a fuller and nobler righteousness than they have
attained. They have learned to judge others with a gentle judgment
because they know how much they themselves need it, and to extend to
others a helping hand because they are aware of their own impotence and
need of succour. They have been led through all these, often painful,
experiences into a purity of heart which has been blessed by some
measure of vision of God; and, having thus been equipped and prepared,
they are fit to go out into the world and say, in the presence of all
its tempests, 'Peace! be still.' Something of the miracle-working energy
of the Master whom they serve will be shed upon those who serve Him.

Brethren, the peacemaker who is worthy of the name must have gone
through these deep spiritual experiences. I do not say that they are to
come in regular stages, separable from each other. That is not the way
in which a character mounts towards God. It does so not by a flight of
steps, at distinctly different elevations, but rather by an ascending
slope. And, although these various Christian graces which precede that
of my text are sep