These two promises, of seeing God, and being filled with righteousness, have place between the individual man and his father in heaven directly; the promise I now come to, has place between a man and his God as the God of other men also, as the father of the whole family in heaven and earth:  ’Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God.’

Those that are on their way to see God, those who are growing pure in heart through hunger and thirst after righteousness, are indeed the children of God; but specially the Lord calls those his children who, on their way home, are peace-makers in the travelling company; for, surely, those in any family are specially the children, who make peace with and among the rest.  The true idea of the universe is the whole family in heaven and earth.  All the children in this part of it, the earth, at least, are not good children; but however far, therefore, the earth is from being a true portion of a real family, the life-germ at the root of the world, that by and for which it exists, is its relation to God the father of men.  For the development of this germ in the consciousness of the children, the church—­whose idea is the purer family within the more mixed, ever growing as leaven within the meal by absorption, but which itself is, alas! not easily distinguishable from the world it would change—­is one of the passing means.  For the same purpose, the whole divine family is made up of numberless human families, that in these, men may learn and begin to love one another.  God, then, would make of the world a true, divine family.  Now the primary necessity to the very existence of a family is peace.  Many a human family is no family, and the world is no family yet, for the lack of peace.  Wherever peace is growing, there of course is the live peace, counteracting disruption and disintegration, and helping the development of the true essential family.  The one question, therefore, as to any family is, whether peace or strife be on the increase in it; for peace alone makes it possible for the binding grass-roots of life—­love, namely, and justice—­to spread throughout what were else but a wind-blown heap of still drifting sand.  The peace-makers quiet the winds of the world ever ready to be up and blowing; they tend and cherish the interlacing roots of the ministering grass; they spin and twist many uniting cords, and they weave many supporting bands; they are the servants, for the truth’s sake, of the individual, of the family, of the world, of the great universal family of heaven and earth.  They are the true children of that family, the allies and ministers of every clasping and consolidating force in it; fellow-workers they are with God in the creation of the family; they help him to get it to his mind, to perfect his father-idea.  Ever radiating peace, they welcome love, but do not seek it; they provoke no jealousy.  They are the children of God, for like him they would be one with