sees- feel, in some degree, as he feels. Then we shall know how to love all things rightly. Drawn unto him by that love which he has shown for usdrawn to him by that manifested goodness in which he appears to us in every form of daily benefit, and especially in the character and life of Jesus Christ; drawn to him and loving him, we shall know how truly to love all things; and more than that, we may in some little degree learn to love him even as he has loved us. It depends, then, upon where you start the point of view from which you look-how you read this text. If you start from the love of the world, it will be to you a stumbling-block in the way of real religion; if you start from the love of the Father, it will be to you a help, showing you how to love all things truly, in the spirit of God, and with the great love that was in Jesus Christ.

LONGING FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.-Matt. v. 6.

CALL your attention this morning to one of the

I beatitudes as set forth in the text. In the present

discourse we will consider two points-first, the condition of the beatitude; and, second, its nature or result.

A

In the first place, then, consider the strong expressions used in the text. They convey an idea of the most intense desire and longing. The spiritual condition is represented by the most potent of the animal appetites-hunger and thirst-appetites that can not be subdued—that never can be completely overcome. man may conquer or control all other inclinations; he may succeed in almost extirpating them from his nature; but these will assert their claims, and must be satisfied. No ascetic privation, no strenuous effort of the will, can lift a man into absolute superiority to the demands of hunger and thirst.

Hunger," says a recent writer, "is one of the beneficent and terrible instincts-the fire of life, underlying all impulses to labor, and moving men to noble

activities by its imperious demands. On the other hand, it subjects the humanity in man, and makes the brute predominate; it impels the most beneficent activities; it works the most terrible ferocities. Equally potent, and perhaps still more stringent in its impulses, is the sense of thirst."

You see, then, my friends, with what profound discrimination and with what exact propriety these terms were selected by Jesus as most exactly expressing the force and urgency of the desire set forth in this beatitude. First of all, he who would have the blessing promised in the text, must want righteousness-must long for it, as a hungry man longs for food, or a thirsty man for water. Now this tests the value of all mere superficial professions, of all outward conformity, to the rule of righteousness. It is not saying, I love God or desire goodness, that answers the condition of the beatitude. It is not embalming religion in a round of ceremonies, or holding it up before the intellect in the form of a creed, orthodox or heterodox. These are but superficial and cutaneous before the deep requisition, that righteousness shall be earnestly desired, longed for, hungered and thirsted for. In one word, the condition must accord with the mind and spirit of Jesus Christ, who said, "My meat and my drink is to do the will of Him that sent me." His disciples had gone into the city to buy meat to answer the ordinary demands of appetite, but so absorbed did he become in the love and service of his great mission, that even those demands,

imperious as they are, were forgotten, and he found a sustenance for his higher nature, and therefore for his entire nature, in doing the will of his Father who was in heaven. So must this desire be in us, over-mastering and all-absorbing, before we fulfill the condition of the beatitude.

But how can a man have this longing-how can he entertain this hunger and thirst-unless he perceives the greatness, the necessity, and the intrinsic worth of the thing desired?

Therefore it is well, as another condition of the beatitude, to consider what is meant here by righteousness. It is not merely the single virtue of justice or rectitude -in fact, no virtue is absolutely single, if we look at it closely. A man can not really have one virtue, and but one, genuine and complete. He can not have one without having all virtues and all graces, for no one virtue or grace is complete without the intermingling of the life and reciprocal action of all the rest. We make a great mistake if we suppose otherwise. There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue. If we suppose there could be such things as isolated virtues, that a man could cherish one principle, and at the same time be corrupt in regard to another, we make an egregious mistake. Can a man be thoroughly and strictly honest, and at the same time be a selfish man? Can he be temperate

and at the same time unchaste-just, and yet unmerciful? So, if thoroughly analyzed, if rightly conceived in its essence, rectitude will stand for the significance of the word righteousness in the text. If we hunger and thirst for rectitude with all that rectitude implies, we should get at the essence of the thing brought before us. In reality, it means a state of mind and heart; a soil out of which all single virtues grow; the spirit of all virtues, of all moral excellence, rather than any particular form of virtue or moral excellence.

Then, again, it is not merely a desire to see righteousness prevailing in the world at large-a longing for righteousness to be done-although that is included. I suppose, in reality, we have in this expression, "righteousness," or in the desire for it, the first three petitions in the Lord's prayer-"Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." I suppose that a man who is longing for righteousness is longing for the fulfillment of these three branches of the prayer. Sometimes men in looking for righteousness are thinking merely of the social operation of it; its prevalence in the world at large; the reign of justice and of right between man and man. Sometimes men have been so absorbed in furthering this end and striving for it, that they may be said to have forgotten their own souls, and to have neglected their own salvation. They scorn any mean solicitude for themselves in their earnest care for the rectification of the world. But after all, this is not