therefore learned the truths connected with Him, and springing out of Him. So to speak, the seed of truth which fell on their hearts was carried thither from the flower of His Person and Life.
Again, as from this point of view the Sermon on the Mount differs from all contemporary Jewish teaching, so also is it impossible to compare it with any other system of morality. The difference here is one not of degree, nor even of kind, but of standpoint. It is indeed true, that the Words of Jesus, properly understood, marks the utmost limit of all possible moral conception. But this point does not come in question. Every moral system is a road by which, through self-denial, discipline, and effort, men seek to reach the goal. Christ begins with this goal, and places His disciples at once in the position to which all other teachers point as the end. They work up to the
goal of becoming the 'children of the Kingdom;' He makes men such, freely, and of His grace: and this is the Kingdom. What the others labour for, He gives. They begin by demanding, He by bestowing: because he brings good tidings of forgiveness and mercy. Accordingly, in the real sense, there is neither new law nor moral system here, but entrance into a new life: 'Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father Which is in heaven is perfect.'
But if the Sermon on the Mount contains not a new, nor, indeed, any system of morality, and addresses itself to a new condition of things, it follows that the promises attaching, for example, to the so-called 'Beatitudes' must not be regarded as the reward of the spiritual state with which they are respectively connected, nor yet as their result. It is not because a man is poor in spirit that his is the Kingdom of Heaven, in the sense that the one state will grow into the other, or be its result; still less is the one the reward of the other. [1 To adopt the language of St. Thomas Aquinas, it is neither meritum ex congruo, nor yet is it ex condigno. The Reformers fully showed not only the error of Romanism in this respect, but the untenableness of the theological distinction.] The connecting link, so to speak, the theological copula between the 'state' and the promise, is in each case Christ Himself: because He stands between our present and our future, and 'has opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.' Thus the promise represents the gift of grace by Christ in the new Kingdom, as adapted to each case.
It is Christ, then, as the King, Who is here flinging open the gates of His Kingdom. To study it more closely: in the three chapters, under which the Sermon on the Mount is grouped in the first Gospel, [a chs. v.-vii.] the Kingdom of God is presented successively, progressively, and extensively. Let us trace this with the help of the text itself.
In the first part of the Sermon on the Mount [b St. Matt, v.] the Kingdom of God is delineated generally, first positively, and then negatively, marking especially how its righteousness goes deeper than the mere letter of even the Old Testament Law. It opens with ten Beatitudes, which are the New Testament counterpart to the Ten Commandments. These present to us, not the observance of the Law written on stone, but the realisation of that Law which, by the Spirit, is written on the fleshly tables of the heart, [c St. Matt. v. 3-12.]
These Ten Commandments in the Old Covenant were preceded by a Prologue, [d Ex. xix. 3-6.] The ten Beatitudes have, characteristically, not a Prologue but an Epilogue, [e St. Matt. v. 13-16.] which corresponds to the Old Testament Prologue. This closes the first section, of which the object was to present the Kingdom of God in its characteristic features. But here it was necessary, in order to mark the real continuity of the New Testament with the Old, to show the relation of the one to the other. And this is the object of verses 17 to 20, the last-mentioned verse forming at the same time a grand climax and transition to the criticism of the Old Testament-Law in its merely literal application, such as the Scribes and Pharisees made, [a vv. 21 to end of ch. v.] For, taking even the letter of the Law, there is not only progression, but almost contrast, between the righteousness of the Kingdom and that set forth by the teachers of Israel. Accordingly, a detailed criticism of the Law now follows, and that not as interpreted and applied by 'tradition,' but in its barely literal meaning. In this part of the 'Sermon on the Mount' the careful reader will mark an analogy to Exod. xxi. and xxii.
This closes the first part of the 'Sermon on the Mount.' The second part is contained in St. Matt. vi. In this the criticism of the Law is carried deeper. The question now is not as concerns the Law in its literality, but as to what constituted more than a mere observance of the outward commandments: piety, spirituality, sanctity. Three points here stood out specially, nay, stand out still, and in all ages. Hence this criticism was not only of special application to the Jews, but is universal, we might almost say, prophetic. These three high points are alms, prayer, and fasting, or, to put the latter more generally, the relation of the physical to the spiritual. These three are successively presented, negatively and positively, [b Alms, vi. 1-4; Prayer, vv. 5-15; Fasting, 16-18.] But even so, this would have been but the external aspect of them. The Kingdom of God carries all back to the grand underlying ideas. What were this or that mode of giving alms, unless the right idea be apprehended, of what constitutes riches, and where they should be sought? This is indicated in verses 19 to 21. Again, as to prayer: what matters it if we avoid the externalism of the Pharisees, or even catch the right form as set forth in the 'Lord's Prayer,' unless we realise what underlies prayer? It is to lay our inner man wholly open to the light of God in genuine, earnest simplicity, to be quite shone through by Him. [c vv. 22, 23.] It is, moreover, absolute and undivided self-dedication to God. [d vv. 22-24.] And in this lies its connection, alike with the spirit that prompts almsgiving, and with that which prompts real fasting. That which underlies all such fasting is a right view of the relation in which the body with its wants stands to God, the temporal to the spiritual, [e vv. 25 to end of ch. vi.]It is the spirit of prayer which must rule alike alms and fasting, and pervade them: the upward look and self-dedication to God, the seeking first after the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, that man, and self, and life may be baptized in it. Such are the real alms, the real prayers, the real fasts of the Kingdom of God.
If we have rightly apprehended the meaning of the two first parts of the 'Sermon on the Mount,' we cannot be at a loss to understand its third part, as set forth in the seventh chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. Briefly, it is this, as addressed to His contemporaries, nay, with wider application to the men of all times: First, the Kingdom of God cannot be circumscribed, as you would do it. [a vii. 1-5.] Secondly, it cannot be extended, as you would do it, by external means, [b ver. 6.] but cometh to us from God, [c vv. 7-12.] and is entered by personal determination and separation, [d vv. 13, 14.] Thirdly, it is not preached, as too often is attempted, when thoughts of it are merely of the external, [e vv. 15, 16.] Lastly, it is not manifested in life in the manner too common among religionists, but is very real, and true, and good in its effects, [f vv. 17-20.] And this Kingdom, as received by each of us, is like a solid house on a solid foundation, which nothing from without can shake or destroy, [g w. 24-27.]
The infinite contrast, just set forth, between the Kingdom as presented by the Christ and Jewish contemporary teaching is the more striking, that it was expressed in a form, and clothed in words with which all His hearers were familiar; indeed, in modes of expression current at the time. It is this which has misled so many in their quotations of Rabbinic parallels to the 'Sermon on the Mount.' They perceive outward similarity, and they straightway set it down to identity of spirit, not understanding that often those things are most unlike in the spirit of them, which are most like in their form. No part of the New Testament has had a larger array of Rabbinic parallels adduced than the 'Sermon on the Mount;' and this, as we might expect, because, in teaching addressed to His contemporaries, Jesus would naturally use the forms with which they were familiar. Many of these Rabbinic quotations are, however, entirely inapt, the similarity lying in an expression or turn of words. [1 So in the quotations of many writers on the subject, notably those of Wunsche.]
Occasionally, the misleading error goes even further, and that is quoted in illustration of Jesus' sayings which, either by itself or in the context, implies quite the opposite. A detailed analysis would lead too far, but a few specimens will sufficiently illustrate our meaning.
To begin with the first Beatitude, to the poor in spirit, since theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven, this early Jewish saying [h Ab. iv. 4.] is its very counterpart, marking not the optimism, but the pessimism of life: 'Ever be more and more lowly in spirit, since the expectancy of man is to become the food of worms.' Another contrast to Christ's promise of grace to the 'poor in spirit' is presented in this utterance of self-righteousness [a Sanh. 43 b.] on the part of Rabbi Joshua, who compares the reward ( ) formerly given to him who brought one or another offering to the Temple with that of him who is of a lowly mind ( ), to whom it is reckoned as if he had brought all the sacrifices. To this the saying of the great Hillel [b Vayyik. R. 1, ed. Warsh. p. 2 b.] seems exactly parallel: 'My humility is my greatness, and my greatness my humility,' which, be it observed, is elicited by a Rabbinic accommodation of Ps. cxiii., 5, 6: 'Who is exalted to sit, who humbleth himself to behold.' It is the omission on the part of modern writers of this explanatory addition, which has given the saying of Hillel even the faintest likeness to the first Beatitude.
But even so, what of the promise of'the Kingdom of Heaven?' What is the meaning which Rabbinism attaches to that phrase, and would it have entered the mind of a Rabbi to promise what he understood as the Kingdom to all men, Gentiles as well as Jews, who were poor in spirit? We recall here the fate of the Gentiles in Messianic days, and, to prevent misstatements, summarise the opening pages of the Talmudic tractate on Idolatry, [e Abhodah Zarah.] At the beginning of the coming era of the Kingdom, God is represented as opening the Torah, and inviting
