TH BEATITUDES Part 6

The wisdom of the fathers

THE BEATITUDES Part 6

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" (from "Love Abounding" by George D. Watson)