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a conviction reigns in his heart, clear and strong, that he has power to pour them upon others too. Surely, if these few sayings stood alone, they would be enough to assure to Jesus a place of honor among the benefactors of mankind.

What a treasure of pure feeling, of hallowed sympathy, of true love for man, is contained in these few lines! At the same time they breathe a kind of gentle humor that has generally escaped observation. "Blessed are they that have," say the proverbs of every age; "Better be envied than pitied;" A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Such expressions reflect unmistakably the ignoble, commonplace, so-called practical wisdom of the superficial multitudes of every time and place. In startling contrast to all this, Jesus puts forth his new and purely moral estimate: "Blessed are the poor, the meek, the mourners!

Perhaps the keenness of the paradox would come out still more clearly if we might accept as original the form of the sayings which Luke has preserved. In his Gospel we have only the first four beatitudes, and even these are given in a still shorter form; but he balances them by four Woes!" which do not appear in Matthew at all. The whole passage runs as follows: "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men shall hate you and when they shall cut you off from them, and revile you and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven; for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you rich men, for your consolation is past and gone. Woe unto you that are satisfied, for you shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for you shall mourn Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets." But this is evidently a later form, and, as we have it, far from original. This is clearly shown by the reference to the Jewish ban, or "cutting off;" the expression "for the Son of Man's sake; and, above all, the use of such a phrase as "their fathers," as though Jesus stood outside his people and renounced all connection with them. He could never really have used such an expression.

and weep.

But how can we explain the alterations which the beatitudes have undergone in the third Gospel? The answer to this question deserves especial attention, for it directs us to a

remarkable characteristic of the Gospel. One of the sources1 from which Luke drew his materials was a so-called Ebionite document.2 Ebionites ("poor") was the name given to a party of Jewish-Christians, remarkable for their hatred of the rich and their exaltation of poverty. We shall meet with several traces in the third Gospel of the use of this Ebionite authority. Now there can be no doubt that the words and deeds of Jesus were often such as might fairly be urged in support of these Ebionite views. He had more sympathy

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with e lot of the poor, and paid them more attention than others; and he saw rich men from time to time encumbered by their wealth and position when they might otherwise have joined him. But for all that Jesus was not an Ebionite. There is a wide difference between longing to befriend the poor and systematically exalting poverty, between uttering a solemn warning to the rich and cursing wealth. But as the sayings of Jesus were handed down by oral tradition in the Jewish-Christian circles referred to, their form was now and then involuntarily modified, and in the course of time they were committed to writing in this modified form; and Luke, as already said, drew his four blessings and his four woes from some such Ebionite source, perhaps the Gospel of the Hebrews.5

All this may be quite true, however, and yet the simpler forms of the first and fourth beatitudes, preserved by Luke, may be the most authentic. In that case the additional words in Matthew-poor in spirit, hunger and thirst after righteousness -are put in by way of explanation. If this be so, the explanation they offer is certainly the true one; for Jesus never meant to pronounce a blessing on the heads of all the poor in the ordinary sense, but only over those who felt their poverty, who were conscious of their deep need of help, and longed for spiritual wealth. Nor did he mean to say that literal hunger was a blessed state, but that all who were urged on by the unquenchable and irresistible longing for uncorrupted piety and goodness would be surely blessed.

Let us look at the beatitudes once more. The first four are more or less distinguished from the rest by their reference to passive rather than active virtues, and the last two lines form the transition to what follows. Those who are marked by the graces and virtues spoken of are said to be blessed now in virtue of what will fall to their lot in the immediate

1 Luke i. 1-4. See p. 29. 2 See pp. 22, 57. 4 Compare Matthew xix. 23, 24.

3 Compare Matthew xi. 5 5 See pp. 22, 116.

fature, membership of the kingdom of God, divine consolation, boundless influence, and the satisfaction of the passionate longing of their souls for moral perfection. But we are not to suppose that this future was to begin after their death, and these blessings of salvation to be bestowed on them in heaven. Heaven is not referred to here at all. The kingdom of God is upon earth and nowhere else; and it is to the kingdom of God, to the perfect and blessed society of the future, that the promises refer. And so, in the last four beatitudes, the compassion which the merciful will in their turn receive refers to the grace of God, who will take pity on them when the Messianic kingdom is founded; the privilege of seeing Him refers to the clear and personal knowledge of God which the pure in heart will have in that age. When those who imitate God, the great peacemaker, are called his sons or followers, the title refers to their moral glory as members of the kingdom of heaven; and membership of that kingdom will be the sure reward of those who are persecuted for the good cause. Meanwhile we must bear in mind that Jesus is not describing or referring to eight different types of character; it is one type worked out in eight different directions; it is the description of the followers of Jesus such as he would have them, such as he longed for them to be, though few of them actually united in themselves all these characteristics.

Though the beatitudes make a single whole, the several virtues they enforce appear separately in the teaching of Jesus elsewhere. Thus he lays constant stress upon humility, childlike simplicity and openness, and readiness to forgive; and he is never weary of warning his hearers against pride, hard-heartedness, and avarice. He did not attach the

smallest value to the piety that was made up of words: "Not every one who says [to me] Lord! Lord! shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but they that do the will of my heavenly Father;" and he warned his hearers against the danger of wilful moral blindness, darkening the soul's eye of reason and conscience. "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye be healthy your whole body will be light; but if your eye be diseased your whole body will be darkened. Watch, then, lest the light that is in you be darkness." Following out John's image, "Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is

1 Matthew v. 45; Ephesians v. 1. 2 Matthew vii. 21; compare Luke vi 46. Matthew vi. 22, 23 (Luke xi. 34-36).

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cut down and cast into the fire," he said: "We know a tree by its fruits. A sound tree cannot bear rotten fruit, nor a rotten tree sound fruit. Nor do we gather figs from thorntrees, or grapes from bramble bushes. So, too, the good man brings from the good treasure of his heart the things that are good, and the bad man brings from the bad treasure of his heart the things that are bad; for out of the fulness of his heart his mouth speaks.' So far was he from intending the beatitudes to excuse his followers from moral effort, that he cried to them with solemn emphasis, "Go in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are they that go in by it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and few there are that find it." 3 He knew what constant effort it required, what watchfulness, what self-denial to enter the kingdom of God.

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Let us now take some of the warnings that correspond to these exhortations and blessings. In contrast with the poor who hunger for the highest good stands the picture of the rich fool: "Beware of greed, for abundant possessions cannot make you sure of life! There was once a rich man, upon whose goodly lands such a heavy harvest stood that he was at a loss what to do with all his corn. So he suddenly resolved, 'I will pull down my barns and build far greater ones instead. There I will lay up the produce and the goods of this and former years, and then fling away all care and trouble and anxiety and enjoy my life at ease. I have abundant means for years to come, and I will make the most of them.' But God said unto him, O fool! this very night your life shall be required of you, and where will all that you have gathered up be then? So it is with those who heap up provisions for themselves, but are not rich in God." 5

Jesus not only says that the gentle and pitiful are blessed, but warns us earnestly against setting ourselves on a lofty pedestal and passing sentence on our neighbor: "Judge not others lest you yourselves be judged! For the sentence you pass shall be passed on you, and with the measure you use for others you yourselves shall be measured." 6 He laid all the more stress on this because those who set themselves up

1 Matthew vii. 19; compare iii. 10 (Luke iii. 9).

2 Luke vi. 43-45; compare Matthew vii. 16-20, xii. 33-35.

3 Matthew vii. 13, 14; compare Luke xiii. 24.
4 After an amended version.

5 Luke xii. 15-21.

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as the censors of their neighbor's little faults are often blind to their own much greater sins: "Can you see the splinter in your brother's eye, when you see not the beam that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me get that splinter out of your eye,' when behold! there is a beam in your own eye? O blind one! remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to lay hold of the splinter in your brother's eye, and draw it out." i

He constantly warns us to forgive those that have injured us, and to reconcile ourselves with those we have injured, as a duty we owe in consideration of what we hope to receive or have already received from God. "If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you forgive not others, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.' "2 Once when Simon Peter asked him, "How many times must I forgive my brother when he wrongs me? Seven times?" (the rabbis thought three times enough) he answered, "I say not seven times, but seven and seventy." Then he added this parable:

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"There was once a king who determined, after long delay, to reckon with his ministers and ascertain how much was due from each of them to the royal coffers. So all the high officers of state, the governors of the several districts, the contractors for the tolls and other branches of the revenue were summoned to the court. Among those who were loath to obey the summons was one of the most distinguished, the governor of the richest province. He had long neglected the duties of his post, and had wasted the money he ought to have paid over to his monarch in unexampled dissipation. So the sum had risen at last to almost four million pounds. But now the day of reckoning had come, and, since he could not pay, the prince in Oriental fashion ordered him and his wife and children to be sold as slaves, and all that he possessed to be put to sale, that as much of the debt as possible might be wiped out. The governor fell upon his face at the feet of the king in despair, and cried in supplication, Lord! have patience with me and I will pay it all!' It was a foolish promise that he never could fulfil; but what will not a man say in such dire necessity? His master saw his misery and had

1 Matthew vii. 3-5 (Luke vi. 41, 42).

2 Matthew vi. 14, 15; compare Mark xi. 25, 26. See also Matthew v.

23-26.

Matthew xviii. 21, 22, after an amended version; compare Luke xvii. 3, 4 See Genesis iv. 24, and vol. i. p. 54.

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