MERCIFULNESS IN PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE
‘Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.’
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 as a principle.—It involves—
(a) Commiseration for suffering men. Though this world is the abode of much suffering, because it 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.
(b) 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.
II. Mercifulness in practice.—How shall we describe the merciful man? He is—
(a) Considerate 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.
(b) 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.
(c) Merciful to his beast. A merciful disposition is an indication of what men are, and an earnest of what awaits them.
Bishop Hamilton.