I have said in former sermons that all these promises, which are but the natural outcome of the characteristics to which they are attached, have a double reference, being fulfilled in germ here, and in maturity hereafter.  Like the rest, this one has that double reference.  For the consciousness, here and now, that we are the children of God is but, as it were, the morning twilight of what shall hereafter be an typesetting meridian sunshine.  What depths of divine assimilation, what mysteries of calm, peaceful, filial fellowship, what riches beyond count of divine inheritance, lie in the name of son, the possession of these alone can tell.  For the same Apostle, whose comment upon these words we have already quoted, goes on to say, ’It doth not yet appear what we shall be.’

Only we have one assurance, wide enough for all anticipation, and firm enough for solid hope:  ’If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.’  He must make us sons before we can be called sons of God.  He must give us peace with God, with ourselves, with men, with circumstances, before we can go forth effectually to bring peace to others.  If He has given us these good things, He has bound us to spread them.  Let us do so.  And if our peace ever is spoken in vain as regards others, it will come back to us again; and we shall be kept in perfect peace, even in the midst of strife, until we enter at last into the city of peace and serve the King of Peace for ever.

THE EIGHTH BEATITUDE

     ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake:  for
      theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’—­MATT. v. 10.

We have seen the description of the true subjects of the kingdom growing into form and completeness before our eyes in the preceding verses, which tell us what they are in their own consciousness, what they are in their longings, what they become in inward nature by God’s gift of purity, how they move among men as angels of God, meek, merciful, peace-bringing.  Is anything more needed for complete portraiture, any added touch to the picture?  Yes—­what the world is to them, what are its wages for such work, what its perception of such characters.  Their relations to it are those of peace-bringers, reconcilers; its to them are those of hostility and dislike.  Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

I take these words to be as universal and permanent in their application as any which have preceded them.  This characteristic is, like all the others, the result of those which go before it and presupposes their continuous operation.  The benediction which is attached is not an arbitrary promise, but stands in as close a relation of consequence to the characteristic as do the others.  And it is marked out as the last in the series by being a repetition of the first, to express the idea of completeness, a rounded whole; to suggest that all the others are but elements of this, and that the initial blessing given to the poor in spirit is identical with that which is the reward of the highest Christian character, the one possessing implicitly what the other has in full development.