Five gates to happiness.
We have already looked at three gates to happiness. Let us now proceed to examine the five that still remain to us.
I. HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS.
1. This is a desire for righteousness on its own account, and not for its rewards. It is very different from the merely selfish wish to escape from the penalty of sin. Righteousness is regarded as an end in itself.
2. This is a deep appetite, like hunger and thirst. The most primitive, the most universal, the most imperious appetites are the types of this desire. In our better moments does it not wake up in us with an inexpressible longing? If we could but be like Christ the sinless!
3. It is rewarded by its own satisfaction. These hungry and thirsty ones are to be filled. Nothing but the object of the appetite will appease its craving.
4. Righteousness is attainable in Christ. The Epistle to the Romans shows how this Beatitude is realized in experience.
II. MERCIFULNESS. The previous Beatitude referred to the interior life and the personal desires of individual souls. This Beatitude concerns an attitude towards other people. Perfect happiness is not possible without a right regard to the social relations of life.
1. It is a peculiarly Christian view of those relations to see them in the light of mercy. We are to think especially of kindness
2. The reward of it is to be treated in a similar manner:
III. PURITY OF HEART. We have reached the holy of holies, the inner sanctuary of the Christian life. God regards the state of the heart as of supreme importance. He does not consider that we can have clean hands if we do not possess a pure heart. While foul imaginations are welcomed and gross desires cherished, the whole life is degraded in the sight of God. But the purity of heart has a wonderful reward reserved for it alone—the vision of God. Pure Sir Galahad can see the holy grail which great Sir Launcelot was doomed by his sin to miss. Here, as elsewhere, there is an essential connection between the grace and the reward. Sin blinds the soul; purity is clear-eyed in the spiritual world. Moreover, it is only to the pure in heart that the vision of God can be a reward. The impure would but be scorched by it, and would cry on the rocks and hills to cover them from its awful presence.
IV. PEACEMAKING. We now come to an active grace. The Christian is not to shut himself up in monastic seclusion, indifferent to the evils of the world around him. He is to interfere for its betterment. Peace is the greatest interest of nations, brotherhood the greatest requisite of society. Happy are they who can bring about such things. The process is dangerous and likely to be misunderstood, for the peacemaker is often regarded as an enemy by both sides of the quarrel. His reward, however, is great—to be accounted one of God's sons; like the only begotten Son, who is the Prince of peacemakers. The fitness of the reward springs from the fact that the work is most God-like.
V. PERSECUTION. How far-reaching is the prophetic gaze of Christ to foresee persecution when in the flush of early popularity! How honest is he to foretell it! How serene is his contemplation of it! He knows that there is a great beyond. Already the heavenly treasures are stored up for those who may lose all for Christ's sake. Fidelity till death is rewarded with a crown of life after death (Revelation 2:10).—W.F.A.
Salt and light.
Christ regards his people as the salt of the earth and as the light of the world. In both characters they have a mission to others. The Church exists for the sake of the world. She has a large vocation; the whole earth is the field of her work, and there she is to labour not for her own ends, but to benefit mankind. How grievous is the perversion of those who exactly reverse the position of Christ, and behave as though the world only existed for the benefit of the Church!
I. THE SALT.
1. Its function. The salt is to preserve that on which it is sprinkled from corrupting.
2. Its action. Salt is antiseptic. The Church is expected to be of the same character; not merely to be pure, but to purify. This is not confined to definite crusades against evil. The mere presence of good men and women in the world tends to keep it sound and healthy, by the silent influence of example. The old heathen world was rotting in vice when the Christians appeared and infused a new life of purity into society. We cannot calculate the advantage to the whole world of the presence in it to-day of pure-minded, earnest, unselfish, good men and women. A few such, like a little salt, have an immense influence in preserving a great mass of society.
3. Its failure. The salt may lose its savour. It may not have become corrupt. Yet as a negative thing it is then useless, and only fit to be cast away as so much dust. If the grace of God, if the spirit of' Christ, if the Divine life, vanish from the Church, the corporation may still exist, but its mission will have ceased. For the sake of the world the spiritual vigour of the Church must be preserved. It will not do to be too conciliatory to society. The Church is salt, not sugar.
II. LIGHT.
1. Its nature. Light banishes night. It reveals our danger, shows our path, cheers our hearts, and refreshes our health. All these things are expected of Christian influence on the world.
2. Its position. A city on a hill; a lamp on its stand. Christians are not to be ashamed of their confession. It is the duty of the Church to be prominent, not for her own sake—for her own prestige—but to spread light on others.
3. Its radiance. The light streams out by means of good works. The world cares little for our words, but it has a sharp eye for our works. We want a new gospel for the present age, one written on the lives of Christians, that the world may see the reality of what we preach.
4. Its object, The glory of God. If this last point had not been added, it might have seemed as though the self-glorification were allowable. But our works are not to our own credit, because, if they are good, all the goodness in them comes from the grace of God. Therefore we glorify God in bearing fruit, by so living that his life shines out through our conduct.—W.F.A.
Christ's treatment of the Old Testament.
Here we see the attitude of our Lord towards the Old Testament. He did not come to destroy the ancient teaching, but to fulfil it. Christ's words show two positions—a negative and a positive.
I. THE OLD TESTAMENT HAS A PLACE IN THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMY. The grounds on which this is established are worthy of consideration.
1. Its origin. The Old Testament was inspired by God. It records his words spoken to Moses and the prophets. Words of God are not to be lightly set aside, however ancient they may be.
2. Its truth. Although it is only a preliminary revelation, it.is not the less a real revelation. The truth it contains is partial, and represents an early stage in the development of Divine ideas among men; yet all truth has an eternal element in it which we may discover when we strip off the husk of its temporary form.
3. Its moral character. The Old Testament is a grand testimony to righteousness. We can never dispense with the Ten Commandments. The stern protests of the prophets against national sin stand good to-day as the utterances of an undying conscience.
4. Its spiritual life. It is difficult for a Christian to get beyond the devotional spirit of the Psalms. Private piety is revealed in the Old Testament so as to be the example and stimulus for all ages.
II. THE OLD TESTAMENT IS NOT A SUFFICIENT REVELATION. It was defective by omission. It could not contain all truth, because when it was written the Jews were not capable of receiving all truth. Its limitations are those of an early stage of revelation. These are not reasons for condemning and repudiating the book. The child is not to be blamed because he is not a man. The adult man cannot afford to neglect the child even on his own account, for the child is a prophet from whom much may be learnt. Still, it cannot be denied that he lacks the man's larger wisdom and more enduring strength. The law of righteousness is not sufficient for us. It cannot create goodness. Its directions are formal and external. The deeper, more spiritual righteousness can only be realized when the Law is written on the heart, and this is done, as Jeremiah predicted, only under the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:33).
III. CHRIST FILLS UP THE DEFICIENCIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION. In this sense he fulfils it. He does not only fulfil prophecy by doing what is therein predicted, but he makes the whole revelation of God perfect by filling up the lacunae that appear in the Old Testament.
1. By leading from the letter to the spirit. The Law is not perfected till its inner meaning is discovered and its living spirit brought forth.
2. By exhibiting in life what the Old Testament reveals in word. The Law had never been perfectly kept till Christ came. Then he was absolutely faithful to it, and thus he satisfied its claims.
3. By giving men power to keep the Law. Not in the letter, which is superfluous, but in the spirit, which is essential.
4. By including the inferior older revelation in his new and most perfect revelation. The acorn disappears that the oak may be seen; but it is not destroyed, it is only developed, and its glorification is accomplished by the larger growth which abolishes its own peculiar form and structure.—W.F.A.