1 Life and Letters of the Mev. F. IV. liubcitson, 442.
ST. MATTHEW v. 3 69
that the steps are all down to them. We must descend if we would reigu, stoop if we would rise, gird ourselves to wash the feet of the disciples as a common slave in order to share the royalty of our Divine Master.
Tj The world has its own idea of blessedness. Blessed is the man who is always right. Blessed is the man who is satisfied with himself. Blessed is the man who is strong. Blessed is the man who rules. Blessed is the man who is rich. Blessed is the man who is popular. Blessed is the man who enjoys life. These are the beatitudes of sight and this present world. It comes with a shock, and opens a new realm of thought, that not one of these men entered Jesus' mind when He treated of blessedness.1
I.
The Poor.
1 Whom did Jesus mean by the poor in spirit ? It is usually supposed that He meant the humble-minded, but this was probably not His meaning, as we see from the corresponding passage in St. Luke's Gospel. There we find the Beatitude in a simpler form : " Blessed are ye poor " ; and this phrase must be taken in a literal sense of material poverty, because it is followed by the words, " Woe unto you that are rich ! " and it is impossible, of course, to suppose that Jesus would have condemned those who are spiritually rich. We may feel tolerably sure that the very same people whom St. Luke calls simply " poor " are called by St. Matthew "poor in spirit." But why the variation of phrase, and which of the two phrases did Jesus actually use ? The latter question is beside the mark. Strictly speaking, He did not use either. He spoke Aramaic, the language which in His day had superseded Hebrew in Palestine, and the Gospels were written in Greek. Both phrases are therefore translations, and the actual words used are beyond our reach. There is reason, however, to think that St. Matthew's " poor in spirit " is the later, and St. Luke's " poor " the earlier, version of the saying.
We might illustrate our Lord's point of view by a reference to the Psalms. The Psalmist frequently speaks of the poor (the
1 John Watson, The Mind of the Master, 65.
70 THE FIRST BEATITUDE
poor and needy) as if they were as a matter of course the servants of <iod. They are constantly identified with the godly, the righteous, the faithful ; they sutler undeservedly; God has a special care of them and listens to their cry. There is a certain amount of truth, no doubt, in this picture of the poor which the Psalms draw. It is true to some extent nowadays. Poverty still has a tendency to wean people from worldliness. Poverty may, of course, be so grinding as to fill the mind continually with sordid anxieties and so make a spiritual life almost impossible. But poor people are often strikingly unworldly.
There is a tendency in all material possession to obscure the needs it cannot satisfy. A full hand helps a man to forget an empty heart. The things that effectually empty life are the things that are commonly supposed to fill it. The man who is busy building barns and storehouses is sometimes shutting out the sweet alluring light of the city of God and the vision of heavenly mansions. " Property " is not the best stimulus to faith. " Blessed are the poor." There are fewer obstacles and obstruc- tions between them and the Kingdom. They are not compassed about with spurious satisfactions. There are not so many things standing between them and life's essentials. There is one de- lusion the less to be swept from their minds. History bears all this out. If you look into the story of the Kingdom, you will find it has ever been the kingdom of the poor. They have ever been the first to enter in.
*[| The poverty which was honoured by the great painters and thinkers of the Middle Ages was an ostentatious, almost a pre- sumptuous poverty : if not this, at least it was chosen and accepted — the poverty of men who had given their goods to feed the simpler poor, and who claimed in honour what they had lost in luxury; or, at the best, in claiming nothing for themselves, had still a proud understanding of their own self-denial, and a confident hope of future reward. But it has been reserved for this age to perceive and tell the blessedness of another kind of poverty than this; not voluntary nor proud, but accepted and submissive ; not clear-sighted nor triumphant, but subdued and patient ; partly patient in tenderness — of God's will ; partly patient in blindness — of man's oppression; too laborious to be thoughtful — too innocent to be conscious — too long experienced in sorrow to be hopeful — waiting in its peaceful darkness for the
ST. MATTHEW v. 3 71
unconceived dawn ; yet not without its own sweet, complete, un- tainted happiness, like intermittent notes of birds before the day- break, or the first gleams of heaven's amber on the eastern grey.1
2. Yet the picture which the Psalms put before us is, after all, an ideal one. It is very far from being true that all poor people are, or ever were, followers of righteousness and godliness. Our Lord felt this, just as He also felt the corresponding truth about the rich. He begins by telling His disciples how hard it is for them that have riches to enter into the Kingdom of God, and then He modifies the saying by restricting it to them that trust in riches. Exactly the same modification has taken place in St. Matthew's version of the Beatitude as compared with St. Luke's. The blessing is pronounced on the poor, not, however, on the actual poor, but on those who embrace poverty in spirit, even though as a matter of fact they are rich. The man who by the external accident of his position in life is rich is not necessarily debarred from the blessing, because he can be, and indeed ought to be, in spirit poor.