Matthew 5:7

Matthew 5:7

"Blessed are the merciful." This does not mean the soft and easy natures which confound the distinctions of right and wrong. Nor does it mean that mere humanity and kindliness which are native to some spirits, and which find a pleasure in seeing all around them happy. But the mercifulness of the text is a principle and a grace. It comes from the happy sense of forgiveness. It is the mercifulness of one who not only seeks to obtain mercy, but who has obtained it already.

I. Mercifulness is commiseration for suffering men. Though under the government of a God of love, this world is the abode of much suffering, because it has been, and still is, the theatre of much sin. God leaves the Christian here that he may be the channel of God's beneficence and the perpetuation of His Master's kindness.

II. Mercifulness is compassion for the souls of men. This sort of mercy is a surer test of piety. Blessed are they whose pity, like the Divine compassion, seeks the lost.

III. The merciful man is considerate of the comfort and feelings of others of their health and comfort. From want of forethought, or want of timely activity on their own part, people who are not cruel often perpetrate great cruelties. Blessed are they whose thoughtful vigilance and sympathetic delicacy make them the guardians and the comforters of acute and tender natures, a balm to those feelings which are over-exquisite, and a tonic to those which are too susceptible.

IV. The merciful man is considerate of his neighbour's character. Perhaps there is no production of our world so rare and precious, and yet none which has so many enemies or is so generally attacked, as character. We are apt, in needlessness or bitterness, to take up or even get up a prejudice against particular persons; their oddities, their opposition to our opinions, their successful rivalry in our own line of life, make us severe or hostile censors, and too ready to believe or repeat what is spoken to their disadvantage. But nothing can be more alien to the spirit of the Gospel. It urges us to resemble God Himself, who is the great Guardian of reputations and the Avenger of injured rectitude.

V. The merciful man is merciful to his beast. Blessed are the merciful; for their merciful disposition is an indication of what they are, and an earnest of what awaits them. They have found mercy, and they shall obtain mercy.

J. Hamilton, Works,vol. vi., p. 1.

References: Matthew 5:7. Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 37; Bishop Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons,p. 131; Bishop Magee, Three Hundred Outlines of Sermons on the New Testament,p. 4; J. Oswald Dykes, The Manifesto of the King,p. 101; F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 385; J. Keble, Sermons on Various Occasions,p. 1.