--Welcome words from the glad heart of the Saviour! Do they not
make our hearts burn within us?--They shall be comforted even to
laughter! The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated, the persecuted,
are the powerful, the opulent, the merry, the loved, the victorious of
God's kingdom,--to be filled with good things, to laugh for very
delight, to be honoured and sought and cherished!

But such as have their poor consolation in this life--alas for
them!--for those who have yet to learn what hunger is! for those whose
laughter is as the crackling of thorns! for those who have loved and
gathered the praises of men! for the rich, the jocund, the full-fed!
Silent-footed evil is on its way to seize them. Dives must go without;
Lazarus must have. God's education makes use of terrible extremes. There
are last that shall be first, and first that shall be last.

The Lord knew what trials, what tortures even awaited his disciples
after his death; he knew they would need every encouragement he could
give them to keep their hearts strong, lest in some moment of dismay
they should deny him. If they had denied him, where would our gospel be?
If there are none able and ready to be crucified for him now, alas for
the age to come! What a poor travesty of the good news of God will
arrive at their doors!

Those whom our Lord felicitates are all the children of one family; and
everything that can be called blessed or blessing comes of the same
righteousness. If a disciple be blessed because of any one thing, every
other blessing is either his, or on the way to become his; for he is on
the way to receive the very righteousness of God. Each good thing opens
the door to the one next it, so to all the rest. But as if these his
assurances and promises and comfortings were not large enough; as if the
mention of any condition whatever might discourage some humble man of
heart with a sense of unfitness, with the fear, perhaps conviction that
the promise was not for him; as if some one might say, 'Alas, I am
proud, and neither poor in spirit nor meek; I am at times not at all
hungry after righteousness; I am not half merciful, and am very ready to
feel hurt and indignant: I am shut out from every blessing!' the Lord,
knowing the multitudes that can urge nothing in their own favour, and
sorely feel they are not blessed, looks abroad over the wide world of
his brothers and sisters, and calls aloud, including in the boundless
invitation every living