SERMON III. HUNGERING AND THIRSTING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. MATT. v. 6. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled." It was indeed a new revelation that Sermon on the Mount, to part of which you have just been listening ;new in its method, new in its substance, new in its results. It was new in its method;-for at Sinai out of the thick darkness, amid the rolling thunder, God had spoken of old to a wandering nation as they trembled at the base of the burning hill; but now on the green grass, among the mountain lilies, beside the limpid lake, with the infinite tenderness of sympathy and sorrow, the lips of the Son of Man spake softly the utterance of God. It was new in its substance ;-for there were no narrow prohibitions here, no Levitical ceremonies, no transitory concessions, no statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live, but the eternal, transcendent, unshaken law of mercy and selfdenial, of tenderness and love. It was new in its results;—for that fiery law did but curb and crush one obstinate and rebellious people with a burden which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear; but this was to be a delight for all and for ever, it was to come like a fresh youth to a diseased and decrepit world, revivifying as the summer sunlight, beneficent as the universal air. Whichever one we selected of those divine beatitudes, with which, as with a song sweeter than ever angel sang, our Lord began His Sermon on the Mount, we should find it full of instruction, and we should find it opposed diametrically to the vulgar teaching of the world. And let us admit at once that there are aspects in which these beatitudes seem too high for your youthful age. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;" but how impetuous and resentful, how swift and self-reliant is the heart of youth! "Blessed are they that mourn; but can we dwell on this to you at an age which, as the poet-preacher expresses it, " danceth like a bubble, empty and gay, and shineth like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow which hath no substance, and whose very imagery, and colours are fantastical." "Blessed are the merciful;" "Blessed are the peace-makers; " "Blessed are the pure in heart." Yes, these, doubtless, you might learn even now to practise and to understand, but can we hope that you will see any force in this also," Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled?" It was natural for David, the old worn king, for David, who, after all the buffetings of a stormy life, had learnt, even if it were by evil, that good was best-it was natural, I say, for him to exclaim, " As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!" But such would be in general but exotic and artificial language for most of you. Look at the corn-fields now, and you will see only the green blade, barely struggling into the sunlight out of the frosty soil we do not look yet for the ear, much less for the ripe corn in the ear; nor in the inexperienced neophyte and the timid catechumen do we expect the vision of the mystic and the rapture of the saint. Some, indeed, there may be of you, of whom, in silence and in secret, the grace of God has taken such early hold that to them even such words as these may come of right; but for most of you, as yet, it is enough if the hunger and thirst after righteousness has taken this form that you abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good; that, recognizing the blazonry of your high birth, you scorn and loathe all meanness and malice, all cruelty and lies; that, feeling, as it were, the symbol of certain victory which was marked upon your forehead in your baptism, you turn with a certain honest haughtiness of nature from the baser and more degrading forms of vice; that in the determination to live by God's grace lives pure, and brave, and serviceable, you have, as it were, already set your feet upon the mountain and turned your eyes towards the sun. Would to God that every one of you had gone as far as this! It is true that righteousness, in the language of Scripture, means more than this,-more than moral culture, more than gradual improvement, more than the natural integrity of a rightly-constituted soul. It means the devoted service of God; it means the constraining love of Christ; it means the unutterable yearning of the Spirit for all that is divine. But, nevertheless, virtue, if it be not as yet righteousness, is yet the sweetest flower which blooms beside that narrow path. It has been truly said by a moralist of the eighteenth centurymay you all remember that admirable definition !—that virtue is the conquest of self for the benefit of others; and in this aspect, at least, to disparage virtue because as yet it is not holiness, is to disparage the blossom because it is not yet the fruit. And if you are aiming at this, if you have realised already the sanctity of such service, if your one main desire is that you should be yourself good and happy, in order that others may be the better and the happier for you-in one word, if you recognize that you are not your own, but are God's child, and must therefore by living for others do His work-then fear not this is at least the dawn which shall broaden and brighten into the boundless day. It shall never be yours to cry in disappointment with the dying Brutus : "Oh virtue, thou art but a name!" Nay, more, you may fearlessly claim the gradual fulfilment of the divine. beatitude, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall he filled." For observe, my brethren, there are some-alas! there are many in the world who seem to hunger and thirst after nothing. It is a type which in this age is getting more and more common, the type of those who live as though they had no souls, as though no God had made them, no Saviour died for them, no Spirit shone in the temple of their hearts. They live but little better than the beasts that perish, the life of dead, stolid, spiritless comfort, the life without purpose, without effort, without nobility, without enthusiasm, "the dull, grey life, and apathetic end." The great sea of human misery welters around them; but what is that to them, while the bread is given and the water sure? Over them, vast as the blue dome of Heaven, brood the eternal realities; before them, deeper than ever plummet sank, flows the river of death; beyond it, in gloom unutterable or in beauty that cannot be described, is either the outer darkness or the City of our God; but it seems as though they had neither mind to imagine, nor faith to realize, nor heart to understand. These are they whom in his awful vision the great poet of the Middle Ages saw whirled like the autumn leaves, round and round the outer circle of the prison-house, aimlessly following the flutter of a giddy flag, hateful alike to God and to His enemies, whom, in his energetic language, Heaven despises and Hell itself rejects. These are they of whom, in language no less energetic and intense, the divine poet of the Apocalypse exclaims: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." It is sad, but it is true, that they are nothing, they do nothing, they learn nothing, they add nothing to the sum of human happiness-numerus et fruges consumere nati; their lives, one had well nigh said, worth less to humanity than the very flower that grows upon their graves. Oh! be not you like these. Be something in life, do something, aim at something; not something great, but something good; not something famous, but something serviceable; not leaves, but fruit. You are planted in the vineyard of God, you are watered by the dews of Heaven; let the great Husbandman not look in vain, when He looketh that ye bring forth grapes; for if not, then lo! even now, in the hands of the watchers and the holy ones, the lifted axe may be swinging through the parted air, even now the dread fiat be issuing forth: "Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" 2. But there are others who hunger and thirst indeed, but it is not for righteousness; hunger and thirst, oh, how fiercely, oh, with what futile pain, spending their money for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not. Some -hundreds - like Balaam, are greedy of gain, and if they succeed, then all that they touch seems to turn to gold, and, like |