II.  Let me ask you to look at what I have already in part referred to—­the place in this series which Mercifulness holds.

Now, of course, I know, and nothing that I say now is to be taken for a moment as questioning or underestimating it, that, altogether apart from religion, there is interwoven into the structure of human nature that sentiment of mercifulness which our Lord here crowns with His benediction.  But it is not that natural, instinctive sentiment—­which is partially unreliable, and has little power apart from the reinforcement of higher thoughts to carry itself consistently through life—­that our Lord is here speaking about; but it is a mercifulness which is more than an instinct, more than a sentiment, more than the natural answer of the human heart to the sight of compassion and distress, which is, in fact, the product of all that has preceded it in this linked chain of characteristics and their blessings.

And so I ask you to recall these.  ‘Poor in spirit,’ ‘mourning,’ ‘meek,’ ’hungering and thirsting after righteousness’—­these are the springs that feed the flow of this river; and if it be not fed from them, but from the surface-waters of human sentiment and instinct, it will dry up long before it has availed to refresh barren places, and to cool thirsty lips.  And note also the preceding promises, ’theirs is the kingdom of heaven’; ‘they shall be comforted’; ’they shall inherit the earth; ’they shall be filled.’  These are experiences which, again, are another collection of the head-waters of this stream.

That is to say, the true, lasting, reliable, conquering mercifulness has a double source.  The consciousness of our own weakness, the sadness that creeps over the heart when it makes the discovery of its own sin, the bowed submission primarily to the will of God, and secondarily to the antagonisms which, in subservience to that will, we may meet in life, and the yearning desire for a fuller righteousness and a more lustrous purity in our own lives and characters—­these are the experiences which will make a man gentle in his judgment of his brother, and full of melting charity in all his dealings with him.  If I know how dark my own nature is, how prone to uncommitted evils, how little I have to thank myself for the virtues that I have practised, which are largely due to my exemption from temptation and to my opportunities, and how little I have in my own self that I can venture to bring to the stern judgment which I am tempted to apply to other people, then the words of censure will falter on my tongue, and the bitter construction of my brother’s conduct and character will be muffled in silence.  ’Except as to open outbreakings,’ said one of the very saintliest of men, ’I want nothing of what Judas and Cain had.’  If we feel this, we shall ask ourselves, ‘Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant?’ and the condemnation of others will stick in our throats when we try to utter it.