“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3) IT IS indeed blessed to mark how this sermon opens. Christ began not by pronouncing maledictions on the wicked, but by pronouncing benedictions on His people. How like Him was this, to whom judgment is a strange work (Isa. 28:21, 22; cf. John 1:17). But how strange is the next word: “blessed” or “happy” are the poor—“the poor in spirit.” Who, previously, had ever regarded them as the blessed