Now that sequence can scarcely be accidental.  It is the application in detail of the great principle which our Lord endorsed in its Old Testament form when He said that the first great commandment, the love of God, had a companion consequent on and like unto it, the love of our neighbour.  Religion without beneficence, and beneficence without religion, are equally maimed.  The one is a root without fruit, and the other a fruit without a root.  The selectest emotions, the lowliest faith, the loftiest aspirations, the deepest consciousness of one’s own unworthiness—­these priceless elements of personal religion—­are of little worth unless there are inseparably linked with them meekness, mercifulness, and peacemaking.  ’What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’  If any Christian people have neglected the service of man for the worship of God, they are flying in the face of Christ’s teaching.  If any antagonists of Christianity attack it on the ground that it fosters such neglect, they mistake the system that they criticise, and are judging it by the imperfect practice of the disciples instead of by the perfect precepts of the Master.

So, then, here we have a characteristic lodged in the very heart of this series of Beatitudes which refers wholly to our demeanour to one another.  My remarks now will, therefore, be of a very homely, commonplace, and practical kind.

I. Note the characteristic on which our Lord here pours out His blessing—­Mercy.

Now, like all the other members of this sequence, with the exception, perhaps, of the last, this quality refers to disposition much rather than to action.  Conduct is included, of course; but conduct only secondarily.  Jesus Christ always puts conduct second, as all wise and great teachers do.  ‘As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.’  That is the keynote of all noble morality.  And none has ever carried it out more thoroughly than has the morality of the Gospel.  It is a poor translation and limitation of this great word which puts in the foreground merely merciful actions.  The mercifulness of my text is, first and foremost, a certain habitual way of looking at and feeling towards men, especially to men in suffering and need, and most especially to men who have proved themselves bad and blameworthy.  It is implied that a rigid retribution would lead to severer methods of judgment and of action.

Therefore the first characteristic of the merciful man is that he is merciful in his judgments; not making the worst of people, no Devil’s Advocate in his estimates of his fellows; but, endlessly, and, as the world calls it, foolishly and incredibly, gentle in his censures, and ever ready to take the charitable—­which is generally the truer—­construction of acts and motives.  That is a very threadbare thought, brother, but the way to invest commonplace with startling power is to bring it into immediate connection with our own life and conduct.  And if you will try to walk by this threadbare commonplace for a week, I am mistaken if you do not find out that it has teeth to bite and a firm grip to lay upon you.  Threadbare truth is not effete until it is obeyed, and when we try to obey it, it ceases to be commonplace.