THE POOR IN SPIRIT.

THE FIRST BEATITUDE.

" Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” — St. Matt. v. 3.

When St. Luke recorded the Beatitudes he rendered this saying, "Blessed be ye poor"  — poor without qualification — "for yours is the kingdom of God.” The critics have discussed which was the original form of the Beatitude, most of them inclining to the shorter and simpler form.

But is there, indeed, any reason why Jesus should not have expressed the thought in both ways? If critics would only keep near to the experience of life they would be saved from many difficulties. Every preacher and teacher is for ever repeating and reiterating favourite thoughts, modifying them in expression as occasion requires, believing that such repetition is the only way to permanent impression. At one time, and to a wider audience than the disciples (as St. Luke suggests), our Lord may have said, “Blessed be ye poor” — poor in purse and possession. And the multitude who heard — remember that the great majority of mankind are poor — would not misunderstand His message. They would recognise the universal note in it — its large democratic reference. As a poor man spoke to poor men, they would see that their lot was not without its alleviations.

It was not the first time that a prophet of Israel had given a warning against the risks of riches — the danger of self-complacency and arrogance and materialism, the danger of supposing that because out of a superfluity it is easy to do kind and good things, therefore one is a kind and good man. Nor was it the first time that a prophet of Israel had declared that the grace of God, and all the things which matter most for life, cannot be bought for money, and are independent of outward conditions. “The poor have the gospel preached to them,” was as much the burden of Isaiah as of our Lord.

One need not doubt, therefore, that at some time — or it may be often — Jesus spoke to the masses of men and said, without any qualification or more inward meaning, "Blessed be ye poor.”

Yet He gave to the disciples — He left for us — a message far more profound than that. Jesus would have been the last to limit spiritual graces to any outward lot. All beggars are not like Lazarus. A poor man may be as grasping and avaricious and material as any millionaire. Moreover, there was in the history of His people the record of men of wealth — men like Abraham and Job, who were reverenced by their race as men of God. In His own teaching our Lord dwelt much on the right stewardship of property; and He offered the noblest reward that service ever gained to the man who had wisely turned his five talents into ten. He, who knew human nature through and through, understood well how a certain measure of comfort saves from many of the grosser temptations of life, and how wealth increases the chances of usefulness which are open to a generous and unselfish man. Most of us can only follow one profession — we are doctors, or lawyers, or teachers, or so forth. But a rich man can follow many professions. His money can endow research, can found hospitals, can multiply libraries, museums, galleries of art. Vicariously, by his wealth, he can be the general benefactor of mankind. It is obvious to any one who knows the teaching of Christ that He recognised this, and would have been ill-content had His blessing been withheld from the philanthropist of the warm heart and liberal hand.

It is probable, therefore, that the Beatitude as St. Matthew has recorded it — whether or not it be the first form or the form most commonly used — is the profoundest expression of the mind of Christ. It alone is wholly true to His method of inwardness; it alone makes plain that it is not a man’s possessions or his poverty that matters, it is the man himself. "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — whether they are poor in pocket or not.

When we read the Beatitude in this form we see within its folds two most characteristic teachings of our Lord.

I. The first is the worth of mere manhood and womanhood. Whether men and women be rich or poor, high or low, learned or ignorant, they yet are men and women: and their wisdom is to reverence their nature as a thing apart from all adventitious considerations. If he learn this lesson aright, the wealthiest man may be “poor in spirit

It is evident from this that the grace of the Beatitude is as far remote as can be from what is called "poor-spiritedness" — from the frame of the mean and timid, or from defective spirituality. Only a man accomplished in the life of the soul is able to see himself apart from his surroundings and to face the naked reality of things. It was one of the great charms of the Stoic temper — it was the Stoic’s contribution to the philosophy of life — that an emperor like Marcus Aurelius and a slave like Epictetus were alike able to see past the accidents of life to the essential worth of the human soul. What Jesus meant by being "poor in spirit,” was just this Stoic discernment of the big and meaningful beside those outward possessions which loom so large in the eyes of many who have not learned the proportion of things.

A great Christian divine, Jeremy Taylor, set forth the same lesson when he wrote: "I have fallen into the hands of thieves: what then? They have left me the sun and the moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can still discourse. And, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance and my cheerful spirit and a good conscience.”

The patriarch Job, long before either the Stoic or the Christian teacher, had spoken the language of the poor in spirit in words more memorable than any when he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.”

It is impossible not to admire those who can sit so lightly to outward conditions, and who can be themselves alike in sunshine and in shower. Yet the question arises: Are we to agree with those who maintain that such an attitude is impossible for ourselves, and the grace of the Beatitude is so unworldly that it is for ever beyond our reach?

Such "poverty of spirit" is not so uncommon an accomplishment as such sceptics would suppose. Every one remembers how Dr. Johnson went to see the famous actor David Garrick in his rooms, and as he looked on Garrick’s surroundings of luxury and beauty and artistic value, he said, "Ah, Davie, Davie, these are the things which make death terrible.” But though a casual spectator of such an attractive environment might without foolishness utter such a sentiment, one wonders how far it entered at all into the facts of the case, and whether a man like Garrick was less able and willing to see the naked truths of the world than if his abode had been amid objects less congenial to his artistic nature.

It is likely to be true that a man will learn to be "poor in spirit" most readily just when he is least occupied with external considerations; and that is when his surroundings jar the least upon his sensibilities. Here is for ever the justification of fine art.

For the same reason one has little belief in the crusade of those daring spirits who advocate what they call the “simple life.” Grant all the elements of force in their plea, there remains the insuperable objection that their attitude is a pose, an affectation, an aping of self-sacrifice. What they attain of outward conformity to the simple life, they lose in real simplicity of spirit. The inwardness of the Beatitude is at enmity with every artificial counterfeit.

Yet in all classes of the community there are multitudes who attain to its spirit — multitudes who are not troubling much about what they have or can gain, who are more interested in the friendships and affections with which they are surrounded, the books they read, the causes in which they are absorbed, their political party, their Church — external things, no doubt, yet not incompatible with "poverty of spirit,” not leading to self-assertion or arrogance, not thought of as personal possessions, but as the innocent preoccupation of unworldly souls.

So far from the first Beatitude enshrining an unattainable grace, the genuine humility of it is the normal frame of mind, at least of the majority of thinking men and women. Most people know that they came naked into this world, and are near an inevitable hour when they will go naked out of it

II. It is when we turn to a second and more religious meaning of the Beatitude that one is less certain of its common attainment. Not only do the "poor in spirit" know that the things which are seen and temporal are the accidents and not the essentials of life; they know also that, because they are poor, they need to depend on God. To be humble and to feel one’s helplessness is one thing; to look above for * help is another. The Stoic did not learn that second lesson; and in the presence of proofs of our weakness in the universe more appalling than any Stoic ever realised, there are thousands of our fellow-countrymen who will not learn it.

"Nothing in my hand I bring.

Simply to Thy Cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to Thee for grace.”

That is the complete utterance of him who is “poor in spirit.” At the Holy Communion he says, “We are not worthy so much as to gather the crumbs that fall from Thy Table.” His very attitude at prayer asserts his dependence. When he offers alms he says, with King David, "All things come of Thee, and of thine own we give Thee.” When he goes forth to Christian service he knows how true were the words of His Master, “Without me ye can do nothing.” Truth, holiness, happiness — for all he depends on Another. He is a little child in the great Father’s house, and knows that for the provision of body and mind and spirit he looks to the Father’s bounty.

That is a difficult grace to learn. But until we have learned to be dependent on God, as well as independent of the world, we have not earned the whole blessing upon the "poor in spirit.”

III. A third reflection remains. It is that here we have the best light on our Lord’s use of rewards and punishments. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

There is no use in denying that many moralists and religious thinkers have been distressed by the feet that the New Testament seems so full of the idea of gain. Do this, and you will be amply paid for it. Deny yourself that, and a rich compensation will anon await you. The Evangelical preachers of another day — not so far remote from ours — were most forcible when they expounded such a theme, and made heaven or hell the alluring or deterrent incentives to conduct. They were not without their appeal to the very words of Jesus — to such blessings as those of the first Beatitude, and to such promises as were made to the Twelve Disciples, that if they forsook houses and lands for Christ’s sake, manifold more of outward blessings would be theirs even in this world, and an eternal guerdon of glory would crown their heads beyond.

The modern mind has turned from such an estimate of virtue as conduct calculated by consequence, and sees the only worth of virtue in its being sought for itself alone. A writer like the late Sir John Seeley made out that the disciples of our Lord, if they believed His promises, were really making an astute bargain for themselves, and the veneration which the Church has paid them would on such a basis be little enough deserved.

But surely in these very Beatitudes is the key to all our Saviour’s use of rewards and punishments. At times our Lord spoke of material things. In a world of imagery He had to speak in images. The streets of gold and the many mansions of the Father’s house seemed a wonderful reward to a poor man with his one-roomed house. Yet all the time Christ’s mind was dominated with other and spiritual things, and every symbol must be read in the light of the Sermon on the Mount, with its promises for the spirit alone. Applause, indeed, is the due of virtue; reward is its proper flower and crown. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But the only reward worth thinking of is the joy of going on. Even now the "poor in spirit" enter the atmosphere of the eternal, and some breath of their immortal destiny fans their brow. They know even now that they are not mocked; that their aspirations are not in vain; that they are not seeking an illusion which will vanish as one has seen the mirage of the desert vanish as experience brought a nearer view. Theirs is, and because it is, will be the Kingdom of Heaven. Fancy telling a scientific man that his reward will be some money, some tide, some popularity. The reward he seeks is to learn more of nature, to seek more firmly the control of her agencies, to wrest something more of her secret out of the dark. Fancy telling a good man that his reward will be to sit on a gold throne, and to play a harp for all eternity. The reward he seeks is to know himself better — to see faculties he has hardly as yet realised develop and gain co-ordination and elasticity and power; it is to see a usefulness which he had dreamed of, but which narrow limits of opportunity had restricted, become great and beneficent on an ampler field in a serener air; it is to find a fellowship open and generous, and ever widening and deepening with the holy, wise, and good, who are the true congeners of his soul. Such a reward — not selfish or sordid or unworthy of the loftiest of our race — Jesus has promised to His people. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”