have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be oast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. 14.  Ye are the light of the world.  A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 15.  Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16.  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’—­MATT. v. 1-16.

An unnamed mountain somewhere on the Sea of Galilee is the Sinai of the new covenant.  The contrast between the savage desolation of the wilderness and the smiling beauty of the sunny slope near the haunts of men symbolises the contrast in the genius of the two codes, given from each.  There God came down in majesty, and the cloud hid Him from the people’s gaze; here Jesus sits amidst His followers, God with us.  The King proclaims the fundamental laws of His kingdom, and reveals much of its nature by the fact that He begins by describing the characteristics of its subjects, as well as by the fact that the description is cast in the form of beatitudes.

We must leave unsettled the question as to the relation between the Sermon on the Mount and the shorter edition of part of it given by Luke, only pointing out that in this first part of Matthew’s Gospel we are evidently presented with general summaries; as, for example, the summary of the Galilean ministry in the previous verses, and the grand procession of miracles which follows in chapters viii. and ix.  It is therefore no violent supposition that here too the evangelist has brought together, as specimens of our Lord’s preaching, words which were not all spoken at the same time.  His description of the Galilean ministry in ch. iv. 23, as ‘teaching’ and ‘healing,’ governs the arrangement of his materials from chapter v. to the end of chapter ix.  First comes the sermon, then the miracles follow.

The Beatitudes, as a whole, are a set of paradoxes to the ’mind of the flesh.’  They were meant to tear away the foolish illusions of the multitude as to the nature of the kingdom; and they must have disgusted and turned back many would-be sharers in it.  They are like a dash of cold water on the fiery, impure enthusiasms which were eager for a kingdom of gross delights and vulgar conquest.  And, no doubt, Jesus intended them to act like Gideon’s test, and to sift out those whose appetite for carnal good was uppermost.  But they were tests simply because they embodied everlasting truths as to the characters of His subjects.  Our narrow space allows of only the most superficial treatment of these deep words.