It is not the proud, it is not the greedy of distinction, it is not those who gather and hoard, not those who lay down the law to their neighbours, not those that condescend, any more than those that shrug the shoulder and shoot out the lip, that have any share in the kingdom of the Father.  That kingdom has no relation with or resemblance to the kingdoms of this world, deals with no one thing that distinguishes their rulers, except to repudiate it.  The Son of God will favour no smallest ambition, be it in the heart of him who leans on his bosom.  The kingdom of God, the refuge of the oppressed, the golden age of the new world, the real Utopia, the newest yet oldest Atlantis, the home of the children, will not open its gates to the most miserable who would rise above his equal in misery, who looks down on any one more miserable than himself.  It is the home of perfect brotherhood.  The poor, the beggars in spirit, the humble men of heart, the unambitious, the unselfish; those who never despise men, and never seek their praises; the lowly, who see nothing to admire in themselves, therefore cannot seek to be admired of others; the men who give themselves away—­these are the freemen of the kingdom, these are the citizens of the new Jerusalem.  The men who are aware of their own essential poverty; not the men who are poor in friends, poor in influence, poor in acquirements, poor in money, but those who are poor in spirit, who feel themselves poor creatures; who know nothing to be pleased with themselves for, and desire nothing to make them think well of themselves; who know that they need much to make their life worth living, to make their existence a good thing, to make them fit to live; these humble ones are the poor whom the Lord calls blessed.  When a man says, I am low and worthless, then the gate of the kingdom begins to open to him, for there enter the true, and this man has begun to know the truth concerning himself.  Whatever such a man has attained to, he straightway forgets; it is part of him and behind him; his business is with what he has not, with the things that lie above and before him.  The man who is proud of anything he thinks he has reached, has not reached it.  He is but proud of himself, and imagining a cause for his pride.  If he had reached, he would already have begun to forget.  He who delights in contemplating whereto he has attained, is not merely sliding back; he is already in the dirt of self-satisfaction.  The gate of the kingdom is closed, and he outside.  The child who, clinging to his Father, dares not think he has in any sense attained while as yet he is not as his Father—­his Father’s heart, his Father’s heaven is his natural home.  To find himself thinking of himself as above his fellows, would be to that child a shuddering terror; his universe would contract around him, his ideal wither on its throne.  The least motion of self-satisfaction, the first thought of placing himself in the forefront of estimation, would be to him a flash from the nether