Quiet Talks on Following the Christ | Page 6

be the picture that underlies that phrase, "poor in spirit,"
which the Master declared to be so blessed.[9] He is trying to woo men
away from the thing that is dominating those all around Him. I have
puzzled a good bit over the phrase to find out just what was in the
Master's mind. Emphasizing the word "spirit" seems to bring out the
meaning. The blessedness is not in being poor, but in a certain spirit
that may control a man. We are all poor in everything except spirit.
The last degree of poverty is to be a pauper. Now, the simple truth is
that we are all--every last man of us--paupers in everything. We haven't
a thing we haven't got from some one else. We are beneficiaries to the
last degree, dependent on the bounty of Another. We are paupers in life
itself. Our life came to us in the first instance from the creative Hand,
through the action of others, and it is being sustained every moment by
the same Hand. We had nothing to do with its coming, and, while we
influence our life by living in accord with certain physical laws, still
the life itself is all the time being supplied to us directly by the same
unseen Hand.
We are paupers in ability, in virtue, in character, in fact in everything.
We own nothing; we only hold it in trust. We have nothing except what

some One else is supplying. What we call our ability, our genius, and
so on, comes by the creative breath breathing afresh upon and through
what the patient creative Hand has supplied and is sustaining. We are
paupers, without a rag to our bones, or a copper in the pocket we
haven't got, not having a rag to our bones; paupers in everything
except----.
There is an exception. It is both pitiable and laughable. We are
enormously rich in spirit, in our imagination, in our thought of
ourselves. Blessed are they who are as poor in spirit as they actually are
in everything else. They recognize that they are wholly dependent on
some One else, and so they live the dependent life, with its blessed
closeness of touch with the gracious Provider. In certain institutions are
placed those who imagine themselves to be in high social and official
rank, and in possessions what they are not, who imagine it to such a
degree that it is best that they be kept apart from others. It would seem
like an extreme thing to say that these people are spirit-mirrors in
which we may partly see ourselves. Yet it would be saying the truth.
How laughable, if it were not so overwhelmingly pitiful, must men
look to God,--without a stitch to their backs except what He has given,
without a copper in their pockets except what has been borrowed from
His bank, yet strutting up and down the street of life, heads held high in
air, as though they owned the universe, and--if it did not sound
blasphemous I could add the rest of the fact--and were doing Him a
favour by running His world so skilfully! And it grieves one to the
heart to note that this seems to be about as true within Church circles as
without. The difference between is ever growing smaller to the
disappearing point.
It was into such an atmosphere, never intenser than in Palestine and
Jerusalem nineteen centuries ago, that the man Christ Jesus came. And
He had the moral daring to begin living a dependent life, the true
human life, looking up gratefully to the Father's hand for everything.
Was it any wonder His presence caused such a disturbance in the moral
atmosphere of the world! He insisted, with the strange insistence of
gentleness, on living such a life, through all the extremes that the hating
world-spirit could contrive against Him. Out of such a life comes His

"Follow Me." And in this He is simply calling us back to the original
human life as planned by God.
Now, of course, in that first step, that great "emptying out" step, there
can be no following. There He is the Lone Man, unapproachable in the
moral splendour of His solitude. But from the time when He came in
amongst us as Jesus, our Brother, the typical Son of man, He was
marking out afresh the original road for our feet. This was the
foundation trait in His character. He lived the dependent life.

A Father-pleasing Life.
The second trait in His upward relation was this--He chose to live a
Father-pleasing life. I use those words because He used them.[10] I
might say "consecrated" or "dedicated" or "surrendered" or other like
words. And these are good words, but in common use we have largely
lost their meaning.