every foul, creeping thing, and every blotch and spot upon these hearts of ours spread in the light, we could not face one another; we could scarcely face ourselves.  If you or I were set, as they used to set criminals, up in a pillory with a board hanging round our necks, telling all the world what we were, and what we had done, there would be no need for rotten eggs to be flung at us; we should abhor ourselves.  You know that is so.  I know that it is so about myself, ’and heart answereth to heart as in a glass.’  And are we the people to perk ourselves up amongst our fellows, and say, ’I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing’?  Do we not know that we are poor and miserable and blind and naked?  Oh, brethren, the proud old saying of the Greeks, ‘Know thyself,’ if it were followed out unflinchingly and honestly by the purest saint this side heaven, would result in this profound abnegation of all claims, in this poverty of spirit.

So little has the world been influenced by Christ’s teaching that it uses ‘poor-spirited creature’ as a term of opprobrium and depreciation.  It ought to be the very opposite; for only the man who has been down into the dungeons of his own character, and has cried unto God out of the depths, will be able to make the house of his soul a fabric which may be a temple of God, and with its shining apex may pierce the clouds and seem almost to touch the heavens.  A great poet has told us that the things which lead life to sovereign power are self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control.  And in a noble sense it is true, but the deepest self-knowledge will lead to self-abhorrence rather than to self-reverence; and self-control is only possible when, knowing our own inability to cope with our own evil, we cast ourselves on that Lamb of God who beareth away the sin of the world, and ask Him to guide and to keep us.  The right attitude for us is, ’He did not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.’  And then, sweeter than angels’ voices fluttering down amid the blue, there will come that gracious word, ’Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’

II.  Turn, now, to the blessed issues of this characteristic.

Christ does not say ‘joyful,’ ‘mirthful,’ ‘glad.’  These are poor, vulgar words by the side of the depth and calmness and permanence which are involved in that great word ‘blessed.’  It is far more than joy, which may be turbulent and is often impure.  It is far deeper than any gladness which has its sources in the outer world, and it abides when joys have vanished, and all the song-birds of the spring are silent in the winter of the soul.  ’Blessed are the poor ... for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’

The bulk of the remaining Beatitudes point onward to a future; this deals with the present.  It does not say ‘shall be,’ but ’is the Kingdom.’  It is an all-comprehensive promise, holding the succeeding ones within itself, for they are but diverse aspects—­modified according to the necessities which they supply—­of that one encyclopaedia of blessings, the possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.