We can safely say that the Sermon on the Mount has been more widely acclaimed than any other sermon ever preached. The seventeenth century preacher Thomas Watson wrote of it: ‘Here is both usefulness and sweetness; here is a garden of delight; here is the golden key which will open the gate of Paradise.’ William Perkins, one of Watson’s contemporaries, wrote: ‘These words are a key of the whole Bible, the sum of the Old and New Testaments.’ The nineteenth century Welsh preacher David Thomas said that the Sermon on the Mount ushered in ‘the dawn of a new era in the mental history of the world’, while one of his peers, John Monroe Gibson, said: ‘It stands alone as the grand charter of the commonwealth of heaven.’ The contemporary British writer Michael Green refers to it as ‘The supreme jewel in the crown of Jesus’ teaching’, while John Stott simply calls it ‘The greatest sermon ever preached’.

John Blanchard, The Beatitudes for Today (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 1996), 35.

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