"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be rilled.

"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." — Matt. 5:3-10.

Concerning these beatitudes, there are one or two errors we generally make in reading them. One is that some of the beatitudes belong to this world, and some to the heavenly world. A great many people, in reading the eighth verse, have the impression that that belongs to heaven, and though " they that mourn" belong to this world, yet " the pure in heart " to the heavenly. They are all in the present tense, so we need not transfer any over to heaven that belong to time and experience.

Another error is that they may be divided up according as they suit us, one to get one and one another, like a loaf of bread cut up into slices, each one to take his or her slice. The fact is we are to look upon it as a whole loaf, and every one is to take the whole loaf. It is like a chain; we are to begin at the first verse, and every link is to be twined around the heart of the believer. We are to have the whole in our experience, not divided off. The beatitudes are so arranged that they follow each other as the day follows the daybreak. You cannot transpose them. They are arranged in the order in which the Holy Ghost brings them out in our experience.

This sermon on the mount was addressed to believers only. In the beatitudes Jesus gives us, in a complete form, a statement of the true Christian life. First, poverty of spirit is the corner stone of all deep piety; as in conversion a sense of guilt is the beginning of repentance, so in heart purity a consciousness of inward depravity is the starting point to full salvation. You can't get sinners to repent until you show them their sins, neither can you get believers to seek for cleansing until you show them their inward corruption; and this consciousness of inward depravity is what stirs us up to seek a clean heart. It is not only so in religion. Conscious mental poverty starts us out on the track of learning.

People who think themselves great and who do not seek knowledge are never anything more than conceited dunces all their lives. They haven't even sense enough to know that they don't know anything. A consciousness of our ignorance is the' starting point to wealth and learning. The same is true in material things. As a rule, the ones who strive for riches and those who acquire wealth are those who started with a biting sense of poverty. Yet, though few get wealthy, all they get is from a previous sense of poverty. It is a sense of want that drives us to seek supply. The Lord shows us the poverty in our prayers, — oh, what prayers! — the spiritual poverty in our sermons, in our songs, and in our hearts, and reveals the great lack in our hearts; and when we see how poor our religion is in comparison with the glorious things in the Bible presented as our privilege, we say that we can't stand it, we must have more or give up what we have. What do we do when we become conscious of our spiritual poverty?

The very next step is, we begin to "mourn." Spiritual poverty makes us mourn, lament our depravity. To see our hearts in the light of God's Spirit, all the little mean things that lie all through our natures, — this causes us to grieve. We get down and begin to tell the Lord about it, and we tell our friends about it, but no one feels it like we feel it. Though they see them, they are not so conscious of our depravity, our meanness, our defects, as we are. They can't feel the anguish half that we do caused by our ugly tempers and words. They hurt others, but they hurt us so much more. Mr. Wesley says: "There are two kinds of repentance: one, the sinner's over his sins; the other, the believer's over the depravity of his heart. This causes us to grieve. Isaiah and Job had this repentance." But " blessed are they that mourn." They make us grieve now, but Jesus leans over us and says, "Never mind; you may be grieving now, but blessed are ye, ' for they shall be comforted.' "

The next step is meekness. Mourning will inevitably produce humility, as fire produces heat. Meekness is a sense of conviction that we are very little, very unworthy. Before we get on to this phase of experience we think we are " somebody," esteem ourselves to be good, fair, respectable Christians. We are willing to admit we are humble, but there is a good deal of self-esteem even in that. But when God shows us our poverty, the sight will whittle us down so small that we can hardly find ourselves. We simply dwindle into nothing.

When God humbles us, we get so lowly we think ourselves smaller than everything else, and so we are. We lose our self-conceit and dignity, and regard our un worthiness and unprofitableness. All that is the outgrowth of mourning, which is the outgrowth of that consciousness of spiritual poverty. It is a cross for a person who is thoroughly meek to be pushed into public notice. He desires to hide, to sink out of sight. When we get there we are getting towards the tropics of divine grace, toward full salvation.

The next step is, "hunger and thirst after righteousness." This comes as a direct result of your absolute nothingness in your own eyes. There springs up an intense longing to be like Jesus. Before you get there you desire to get "better." Most all are willing to go forward to the altar to seek to be "better," but they don't come down to real business until they take these first steps. In these advancing steps there is a place you reach from which you cannot retreat. When a fish is about to bite, he can get away, but if he goes beyond a certain point in reaching for the bait, in goes the hook and it is too late for him to retreat. The more he tries to get away, the deeper goes the hook. Every effort to retreat only increases the hopelessness of his position. So in full salvation some will say, "I want to be better, a great deal better." They may rise for prayers, or even go to the altar, and then back out; but when you get to perfect self-abasement, out of which comes an intense hungering and thirsting after righteousness, then you can't back out. Then it is either holiness or hell.

The Holy Ghost draws believers to a point where they see clearly that they must be holy or go to hell. When God draws your soul there, it is glorious, because the Holy Ghost will create a hunger and thirst that will carry you through. Hunger is a tremendous appetite, thirst a much stronger one. Very few people have been hungry or thirsty. Jesus takes these two powerful appetites and combines them, and the figure is that the soul craves God and to be like Him more than we crave meat or drink or the body craves raiment.

The soul cannot sleep hardly, so great is its longing to be like Jesus. My very soul used to break in its longings to be like Jesus. I hated myself, I despised my talents, I scorned my place in the Church. And this intense longing comes from getting in the valley of humiliation, where you can see Jesus. A man in the bottom of a well can see stars in the daytime. In the valley of humiliation you get a view of Jesus you never can get anywhere else. When you get sunken down so low you lose sight of other people and things in the world, you look up and see Jesus, and beauties you never saw before. The proud man lives on the mountain top. He takes in the grand view of the surrounding country, and this prevents him from seeing stars. It is the one away down in the deep gorge that sees them in the daytime. From the gilded peaks of worldliness you can get no view of Jesus.

The next one is, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." "Merciful" is where your heart melts, and you lose your hardness and uncouthness; you are getting where the claws fall from your hands and feet, and you feel like being kind and tender to everybody. This thirst for God produces mercifulness. Now you are very close to the blessing. The Holy Ghost has been leading you up the steps of this golden stairway. Now you say, "I used to criticise holiness," or, "I used to find fault with that brother or sister "; but filled with mercy, you lose sight of everybody's defects. That is where the Church wants to get. The sermon is criticised, and the people are criticised; we are always on our guard; and so, watching for the provocations of life, we are so easily offended and our sense of propriety is so easily shocked that the great "I" has to be handled so carefully we are more like little glass bottles than immortal spirits. Everything jars on our nerves. But when God fills us with mercy, so great is our thirst for God we have no time to search for defects in other people. Merciful to the poor, to the wicked, to the person who does not see things just in the light that you do; a spirit that says, "All others do better than I, and if they had the advantages that I have, would be a great deal better." Ah! now the winter blast is leaving your mind, and the summer sun is melting your heart, your whole being. Oh, it is grand to see a heart go "all to pieces before God "!

The next step is, " Blessed are the pure." "When you get all broken down, it only takes one step of faith to get the blessing of full salvation. When you are all broken up and melted before God, then God's heart is full of compassion toward you, and you will see God; your heart is pure. The next is "peacemakers," or "peacebearers." Now when you get a pure heart, the next thing is to bear it around, let others know it and feel the benefit of it. You commence by being poor in spirit. Now to bear it around means to be a witness to it. Your heart is now cleansed, you have inward peace; now take it like a goblet (as was the custom in Eastern countries of serving the guests with water) and bear it to all the guests in the Lord's family. We are to communicate this. No one but yourself knows about it, for sanctification doesn't make such a change in the outward life; so you must tell it.

"Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you, etc." Do you notice that it is only when you are a witness to full salvation that you begin to be "persecuted"? They won't persecute you for being poor in spirit; they do not care how much you mourn; and they will not vex you even if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, but the minute you begin to testify to it, there is where the lightning strikes. Search the Bible and you will find, all through, instances corroborative of this fact. Jesus was crucified, not because He was holy, but because He testified that He was the Son of God. Persecution has always come on the point of testimony, and only on that point, for this is what hurts Satan's kingdom most and what glorifies God most.

If you are a witness to heart purity, as you must be, there will come just enough persecution to be a blessing, just enough to season your daily bread. And do you notice that the first and last verses have precisely the same rewards? When you take a chain and unite it, the first and last links touch each other. It is blessed all the way. When you feel miserable and "poor in spirit"; when you shed bitter tears; when you come and consecrate your little insignificant all humbly to God; when you "hunger and thirst after righteousness"; when you become softened and filled with mercy; when you are conscious of inward purity, and when you tell it around to others; and even when you are persecuted for the "sake of right-doing," — every step in religion is blessed. From the time that you turn your back on the devil and on your sins, till you land yourself at the throne of God, every step along the ascending golden stair is blessed. You may not see where it is leading to, but God stoops over from above, and at every step says, "Blessed, blessed." Brethren and sisters, don't you want the whole loaf, the fullness of the beatitudes?