So, dear friends, be sure of this, that the one thing which ought to move a man to sadness is his own character.  For all other causes of grief are instruments for good.  And be sure of this, too, that the one thing which can ensure consolation adequate to the grief is bringing the grief to the Lord Christ and asking Him to deal with it.  His first word of ministry ran parallel with these two Beatitudes.  When He spoke them He began with poverty of spirit, and passed to mourning and consolation, and when He opened His lips in the synagogue of Nazareth He began with, ’The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the poor, to give unto them that mourn in Zion a diadem for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.’

THE THIRD BEATITUDE

     ’Blessed are the meek! for they shall inherit the earth,’—­MATT, v.
     5.

The originality of Christ’s moral teaching lies not so much in the novelty of His precepts as in the new relation in which He sets them, the deepening which He gives them, the motives on which He bases them, and the power which He communicates to keep them.  Others before Him had pronounced a benediction on the meek, but our Lord means far more than they did, and, both in His description of the character and in the promise which He attaches to it, He vindicates the uniqueness of His notion of a perfect man.

The world’s ideal is, on the whole, very different from His.  It inclines to the more conspicuous and so-called heroic virtues; it prefers a great, flaring, yellow sunflower to the violet hiding among the grass, and making its presence known only by fragrance.  ’Blessed are the strong, who can hold their own,’ says the world.  ‘Blessed are the meek,’ says Christ.

The Psalmist had said it before Him, and had attached verbally the same promise to the word.  But our Lord means more than David did when he said, ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’  I ask you to think with me now, first, what this Christian meekness is; then, whence it issues; and then, whither it leads.

I. What Christian meekness is.

Now, the ordinary use of the word is to describe an attitude, or more properly a disposition, in regard to men, especially in regard to those who depreciate, or wrong, or harm us.  But the Christian conception of meekness, whilst it includes that, goes far deeper; and, primarily, has reference to our attitude, or rather our disposition, towards God.  And in that aspect, what is it?  Meek endurance and meek obedience, the accepting of His dealings, of whatever complexion they are, and however they may tear or desolate our hearts, without murmuring, without sulking, without rebellion or resistance, is the deepest conception of the meekness which Christ pronounces blessed.  When sorrow comes upon us, unless we have something