What is mercy? I think perhaps the best way of approaching it is to compare it with grace.

Because the only way to have a pure heart is to realize you have an impure heart, and to mourn about it to such an extent that you do that which alone can lead to cleansing and purity.

The second main difficulty is the exact opposite to that; and it is interesting to observe how heresies almost invariably cancel one another out.

The way to become poor in spirit is to look at God. Read this Book about Him, read His law, look at what He expects from us, contemplate standing before Him.

`When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law' (Gal. iv. 4).

Then comes the great statement of the satisfaction of the need, God's provision for it, `Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.'

There is a kind of logical sequence in this Sermon. Not only that, there is certainly a spiritual order and sequence.

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That in turn leads to that second state in which, realizing our own sinfulness and our own true nature, realizing that we are so helpless because of the indwelling of sin within us, and seeing the sin even in our best actions, thoughts and desires, we mourn and we cry out with the great apostle, `O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from