This is the last Beatitude descriptive of the character of the Christian.  There follows one more, which describes his reception by the world.  But this one sets the top stone, the shining apex, upon the whole temple-structure which the previous Beatitudes had been gradually building up.  You may remember that I have pointed out in previous sermons how all these various traits of the Christian life are deduced from the root of poverty of spirit.  You may also remember how I have had occasion to show that if we consider that first Beatitude, ’Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ as the root and mother of all the rest, the remainder are so arranged as that we have alternately a grace which regards mainly the man himself and his relations to God, and one which also includes his relations to man.

Now there are three of these which look out into the world, and these three are consummated by this one of my text.  These are ‘the meek,’ which describes a man’s attitude to opposition and hatred; ’the merciful,’ which describes his indulgence in judgment and his pitifulness in action; and ‘the peacemakers.’  For Christian people are not merely to bear injuries and to recompense them with pity and with love, but they are actively to try to bring about a wholesomer and purer state of humanity, and to breathe the peace of God, which passes understanding, over all the janglings and struggles of this world.

So, I think, if we give a due depth of significance to that name ‘peacemaker,’ we shall find that this grace worthily completes the whole linked series, and is the very jewel which clasps the whole chain of Christian and Christ-like characteristics.

I. How are Christ’s peacemakers made?

Now there are certain people whose natural disposition has in it a fine element, which diffuses soothing and concord all around them.  I dare say we all have known such—­perhaps some good woman, without any very shining gifts of intellect, who yet dwelt in such peace of heart herself that conflict and jangling were rebuked in her presence.  And there are other people who love peace, and seek after it in the cowardly fashion of letting things alone; whose ‘peacemaking’ has no nobler source than hatred of trouble, and a wish to let sleeping dogs lie.  These, instead of being peacemakers, are war-makers, for they are laying up materials for a tremendous explosion some day.

But it is a very different temper that Jesus Christ has in view here, and I need only ask you to do again what we have had occasion to do in the previous sermons of this series—­to link this characteristic with those that go before it, of which it is regarded as being the bright and consummate flower and final outcome.  No man can bring to others that which he does not possess.  Vainly will he whose own heart is torn by contending passions, whose own life is full of animosities and unreconciled outstanding causes of alienation and divergence between him and