sins and repentances over and over again, till we are weary of ourselves, and fear that God is wearied of us too, and that He will give us up in disgust, if He has not given us up already?* Righteousness! what know we of righteousness? Our righteousness indeed is filthy rags; repentance is our daily task; sin clings to us, grows upon us, comes forth spontaneously from within us; it is our life-work to keep it from smothering us altogether. Righteousness! Ah! would God it were indeed ours! Oh, to be pure and clean! Oh, to be strong and firm! Oh, to be what we can just dimly discern we might be, but for these miserable failings, these shameful falls!

Is this indeed what we feel? Is this really our heart's grief, our soul's yearning? Is this indeed the record of our spiritual life, daily repentance, daily longing to be better, daily striving against sin, and to attain to a higher standard? Is it really so? Then for us is this beatitude, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness."

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See what our Lord says; notice His chosen words: They that hunger and thirst after righteousness." It is not here those who attain, but those who desire. No one needs to be told that the righteous are blessed, but it is glad tidings indeed to hear that

*The speculum of the largest telescope foils the optician's skill in casting; too much or too little heat; a grain of sand; an alteration in the temperature, and all goes to pieces! Yet rarer than this is the completeness of Christian character."-F. W. Robertson.

even they who long to be righteous are called blessed by Him Who cannot lie, cannot err.

And surely it is for such that this Gospel is given; for if not, for whom can it be? "There is none righteous, no, not one." There is no saint that ever lived, and soared highest and nearest to Christ in purity, but would take his place among those only who hunger and thirst after righteousness--not higher, nowhere else. "I count not myself to have apprehended; but, forgetting the things behind, I reach on to the things before, if by any means I may apprehend the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus."

Look up, then, and rejoice, O anxious, earnest souls. We are saved by hope; without hope all is ruin. The dead in Christ are blessed; the saints at rest in glory are blessed-they see God's Face and know it; but we too are not forgotten. He has more than one blessing. We are not safe yet, but He blesses us; we are still fighting, suffering, hungering, thirsting, but He blesses us. We seem to have nothing but a want, a desire, an aim, yet He who knows all pronounces us blessed. Hunger means life; hunger means health; He knoweth our infirmities, but He knoweth, too, our heart's desire. Be of good cheer; if God be on our side, who can prevail against us?

But now let us be sure that we are entitled to this blessing. To be blessed of God is so vast and glorious a thing that we may well examine our title to it. There is a mistake very often made in

this matter. Ask many people what true religion is; they will tell you it is the way of salvation. Ask them what they desire from Christ; they will say salvation. See a man living for years as if there were no God, or judgment to come, or heaven, or hell; he is taken ill; he expects to get better, and therefore makes no sign of change; he lies week after week; he gets worse, till there is evidently no hope; death is at hand; then he sends for a clergyman and wants to be saved! The blessing is not for such. It is not written, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after salvation," but " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Nay, it is even written, "He that seeketh to save his life shall lose it." It is righteousness that God would have us desire; to be righteous, godly, i.e. like God, even if there were neither heaven nor hell.

Then, again, this desire must not be merely occasional and spasmodic. Healthy hunger and thirst are regular, daily, life-long. The desire for righteousness also must be all this. "My meat and drink is to do Thy will, O God;" there is the standard. It is not a passing appetite once a week while in church on Sunday, but a daily want. Righteousness is not a superfluity or a luxury, but a necessity.

Then see what hunger and thirst involve. Why do men work and toil? Because they must eat to live. If we could live without eating there would be many who would not work as they do. "He that laboureth laboureth for himself, for his mouth craveth it of him." Just so this hungering

and thirsting after righteousness involves work and diligence, and a thousand other things. It makes a man busy, earnest, careful. What he wants he tries to get by all permitted means.

Many break down under one or other of these tests. Some want salvation, not righteousness; to be saved with sin, not from sin; not to be holy, but to be let off the due reward of their evil deeds, which they love and cling to as long as they can. Some have the whim upon them at times, and get a good turn now and then, but their daily bread is no analogy to them of their need of righteousness. Some lazily admire the beauty of holiness, but never lift a finger to labour for it. They even ask God for it; but they forget that He who bade us pray for daily bread bade us also work for it. Why is all this? A hunger and thirst after righteousness is natural and instinctive in man. It is found in all parts of the world, in all ages, among all races of men. A sense of sin, and a desire not merely of pardon but of sinlessness, is a universal want among mankind.

*

Wherever the body craves for food, the soul longs for God; both are real, and stand or fall together. Just as the one appetite may be destroyed or perverted, so may the other. A morbid appetite craves for unnatural food; a sick man has no desire to eat

"We have as much right to conclude that there is a personal God from the instinct of prayer, as the infant has in concluding it has a mother from the instinct of seeking relief from hunger at her breast."-S. Baring-Gould.

at all; a pampered appetite will not be satisfied with plain and wholesome things, but must have rarities and stimulants; the stomach that is cloyed with sweetmeats has its appetite smothered; and the dead man has done with food altogether. The analogy holds good in the spiritual. The healthy soul hungers and thirsts for God and His righteousness; but many souls are sick and morbid, and even moribund. The very business of some men's lives is to pervert the instincts of their souls, and they succeed. They have no taste for God. They are filthy, and they will be filthy still, and it irks them

not.

O God, open Thou our dull eyes to see Thee; for if we can but see Thee we must love Thee, Who art perfect beauty; and seeing Thee we shall see our own filthiness, and hate it, and hunger and thirst after righteousness, that we may be like Thee, loved by Thee, drawn to be near Thee, with Whom and in Whom alone the eternal and divine soul that is within us can find rest, and peace, and joy!