Or let us consider that other great beatitude and its fortunes, the beatitude recommending the Christian virtue of charity. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Many people do not even understand what it is which this beatitude means to bless; they think it recommends humbleness of spirit. Ferdinand Baur, whose exegesis of texts from the Gospels is more valuable than his criticism of the mode in which the Gospels were composed, has well pointed out that the persons here blest are not those who are humble-spirited, but those who are in the intention and bent of their spirit—in mind, as we say, and not in profession merely—indifferent to riches. Such persons, whether they possess riches or not, really regard riches as something foreign to them, something not their own, and are thus, in the phrase of another text where our received translation is misleading, faithful as regards riches. “If ye have not been faithful in that which is foreign to you, who will give you that which is your own?” The fidelity consists in having conquered the temptation to treat that for which men desire riches, private possession and personal enjoyment, as things vital to us and to be desired. Wherever there is cupidity, there the blessing of the Gospel cannot rest. The actual poor may altogether fail to be objects of the blessing; the actual rich may be objects of it in the highest degree. Nay, the surest of means to restore and perpetuate the reign of the selfish rich, if at any time it have been interrupted, is cupidity, envy, and hatred in the poor. And this again is a witness to the infallibility of the line of Jesus. We must come, both rich and poor, to prefer the common good, the interest of “the body of Christ”—to use the Gospel phrase—the body of Christ of which we are members, to private possession and personal enjoyment.