Again, I may remind you that this mercifulness, which is primarily an inward emotion, and a way, as I said, of thinking of, and of looking at, unworthy people, must necessarily, of course, find its manifestation in our outward conduct.  And there will be, what I need not dilate upon, a readiness to help, to give, to forgive not only offences against society and morality, but offences against ourselves.

I need not dwell longer upon this first part of my subject.  I wished mainly to emphasise that to begin with action, in our understanding of mercifulness, is a mistake; and that we must clear our hearts of antipathies, and antagonisms, and cynical suspicions, if we would inherit the blessings of our text.

Before I go further, I would point out the connection between this incumbent duty of mercifulness and the preceding virtue of meekness.  It is hard enough to bear ’the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,’ without one spot of red in the cheek, one perturbation or flush of anger in the heart; and to do that might task us all to the utmost.  But that is not all that Christ’s ethics require of us.  It is not sufficient to exercise the passive virtue of meekness; there must be the active one of mercifulness.  And to call for that is to lay an additional weight upon our consciences, and to strain and stretch still further the obligation under which we come.  We have not done what the worst men and our most malicious enemies have a right to receive from us when we say, with the cowardly insincerity of the world, ’I can forgive but I cannot forget.’  That is no forgiveness, and that is no mercifulness It is not enough to stand still, unresisting.  There must be a hand of helpfulness stretched out, and a gush of pity and mercifulness in the heart, if we are to do what our Master has done for us all, and what our Master requires us to do for one another.  Mercifulness is the active side of the passive meekness.

Further, in a word, I would note here another thing, and that is—­what a sad, stern, true view of the condition of men in the world results from noticing that the only three qualities in regard to our relation to them which Christ sets in this sevenfold tiara of diamonds are meekness in the face of hatred and injustice; mercifulness in the face of weakness and wickedness; peacemaking in the face of hostility and wrangling.  What a world in which we have to live, where the crowning graces are those which presuppose such vices as do these!  Ah! dear friends, ’as sheep in the midst of wolves’ is true to-day.  And the one conquering power is patient gentleness, which recompenses all evil with good, and is the sole means of transforming and thus overcoming it.

People talk a great deal, and a good deal of it very insincerely, about their admiration for these precepts gathered together in this chapter.  If they would try to live them for a fortnight, they would perhaps pause a little longer than some of them do before they said, as do people that detest the theology of the New Testament, ’The Sermon on the Mount is my religion.’  Is it?  It does not look very like it.  At all events, if it is, it is a religion behind which practice most wofully limps.