re is
no meaning in this saying of our Lord, for then it had been better not
to sorrow at all than to sorrow and be comforted. But if the true
purpose for which we are all gifted with this solemn gift of life is
that we may become 'imitators of God as dear children,' then there are
few things for which men should be more thankful than the sacred sorrow,
than which there are few instruments more powerful for creating the type
of character which we are set here to make our own. All lofty,
dignified, serious thinkers and poets (who for the most of men are the
best teachers) had spoken this same thought as well as Christ. But He
speaks it with a difference all His own, which deepens incalculably its
solemnity, and sets the truth of the otherwise sentimental saying, which
flies often in the face of human nature, upon immovable foundations.

Let me ask you, then, to look with me, in the simplest possible way, at
the two thoughts of our text, as to who are the mourners that are
'blessed,' and as to what is the consolation that they receive.

I. The mourners who are blessed.

'Blessed are they that mourn.' Ah! that is not a universal bliss. All
mourners are _not_ blessed. It would be good news, indeed, to a world so
full of miseries that men sometimes think it were better not to be, and
holding so many wrecked and broken hearts, if every sorrow had its
benediction. But just as we saw in the preceding discourse that the
poverty which Christ pronounced blessed is not mere straitness of
circumstances, or lack of material wealth, so here the sorrow, round the
head of which He casts this halo of glory, is not that which springs
from the mere alteration of external circumstances, or from any natural
causes. The influence of the first saying runs through all the
Beatitudes, and since it is 'the poor in spirit' who are there
pronounced happy, so here we must go far deeper than mere outward
condition, in order to find the ground of the benediction pronounced.
Let us be sure, to begin with, of this, that no condition, be it of
wealth or woe, is absolutely and necessarily good, but that the seat of
all true blessedness lies within, in the disposition which rightly meets
the conditions which God sends.

So I would say, first, that the mourners whom Christ pronounces
'blessed' are those who are 'poor in spirit.' The mourning is the
emotion which follows upon that poverty. The one is the recognition of
the true estimate of our own charac