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| Heb. ii.17. 7. µακάριοι οἱ ! ἐλεήμονες: ὅτι αὐτοὶ 3 ἐλεηθήσονται. 8. µακάριοι
m Rom.
Vim. i. 13, ; ies 16 o1 Tim. i. §; 2Tim. ii. 22.
tity, but as a thing whose nature He is in the act of defining by the aphorisms He utters. Τσο, then it consists essentially in states of mind. Itis within, It is our- selves, the true ideal human.
Ver. 4. ol πενθοῦντε. Who are they? All who on any account grieve? Then this Beatitude would give utterance to a thoroughgoing optimism. Pessimists say that there are many griefs for which there is no remedy, so many that life is not worth living. Did Jesus mean to meet this position with a direct nega- tive, and to affirm that there is no sorrow without remedy? If not, then He propounds a puzzle provoking thoughtful scholars to ask: What grief is that which will without fail find com- fort? There can be no comfort where there is no grief, for the two ideas are correlative, But in most cases there ‘is no apparent necessary connection. Necessary connection is asserted in this aphorism, which gives us a clue to the class described as οἱ πενθοῦντες. Their peculiar sorrow must be one which com- forts itself, a grief that bas the thing it
ieves for in the very grief. The com- fort is then no outward good. It lies in a right state of soul, and that is given in the sorrow which laments the lack of it. The sorrow reveals love of the good, and that love is possession. In so far as all kinds of sorrow tend to awaken re- flection on the real good and ill of human life, and so to issue in the higher sorrow of the soul, the second Beatitude may be taken absolutely as expressing the tend- ency of all grief to pr consolation. — παρακληθήσονται, future. The comfort is latent in the very grief, but for the present there is no conscious joy, but only poignant sorrow. The 30% how- ever, will inevitably come to birth. No noble nature abides permanently in the house of mourning. The greater the sorrow, the greater the ultimate gladness, the “ joy in the Holy Ghost ” mentioned by St. Paul among the essentials of the Kingdom of God (Rom. xiv. 17).
Ver. 5. ol πραεῖς: in Sept. for Dy
in Ps. xxxvii. 11, of which this Beatitude is anecho. The men who suffer wrong without bitterness or desire for revenge, a class who in this world are apt to go to the wall. In this case we should have expected the Teacher to end with the
ὃν of "καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ: ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν Θεὸν “ὄψονται. ϱ. µακάριοι
ο Heb. xii. 14 (seeing God)-
common refrain: theirs is the kingdom of heaven, that being the only thin
they are likely to get. ean Pau
Richter humorously said: ‘“ The French have the empire of the land, the English the empire of the sea; to the Germans belongs the empire of the air”. But Jesus promises to the meek the empire of the solid εατῖ-- κληρονομήσονσι τὴν γῆν. Surely a startling paradox! That the meek should find a foremost place in the kingdom of heaven is very intel- ligible, but “inherit the earth "’—the land of Canaan or any other part of this planet—is it not a delusive promise ? Not altogether. Itis at least true as a doctrine of moral tendency. Meekness after all isa power even in this world, a “world-conquering principle ” (Tholuck). The meek of England, driven from their native land by religious intolerance, have inherited the continent of America. Weiss (Meyer) is quite sure, however, that this thought was far (ganz fern) from Christ’s mind. I venture to think he is mistaken.
The inverse order of the second and third Beatitudes found in Codex D, and favoured some of the Fathers, ε.ρ., Jerome, might be plausibl? justified if the affinity between of spirit and meekness, and the natural sequence of the two promises: possession of the kingdom of heaven and inheritance of the earth. But the connection beneath the surface is in favour of the order as it stands in T. R.