feels that he has, for the moment, failed in allegiance to Him in whom alone lies the strength for a sinner's victory." "In the most trivial temptations he sought to maintain that warfare against sin which made his whole life, as it ripened towards its close, a religion, a devotion, an act of faith."

That example, my brethren, belongs especially to us; we claim it, and we feel it to be ours; like a sweet savour, like a precious heritage, it lingers here; and that life was pre-eminently moulded on the principle which I have roughly striven to illustrate: "He that is faithful in the least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much."

March 5, 1871.

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 will see only the green you 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 century— may 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