SERMON XI.

cr BLESSED ARE THEY WHICH DO HUNGER AND

THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS: FOR THEY SHALL BE FILLED."-Matt. v. 6.

THE three blessings which we have already considered, concerned the habit and temper of our minds, as regarded our thoughts of ourselves, or our behaviour towards others: the one contained in the text refers to the desires and affections, -for the spiritual religion of Christ will have our desires, as well as our tempers, subject to it, will not be content with holding out blessings for mere abstinence from offence, which poverty of spirit and meekness rather consist in, but will have a progress made towards perfection, by advances in active holiness. I need scarcely tell you that all these qualities here mentioned, and therefore their accompanying blessings, belong to one and the same character; that we might, instead of considering them separately, have seen how they all belong to, and flow out of, one another; how the poor in spirit, the mourner for sin, is necessarily meek, and hungers and thirsts after righteousness. This part of the subject we may treat on a future occasion, if God permit: meantime you will have no difficulty in seing how all these depriving and emptying qualities of spirit should naturally lead it to require something to fill and sustain it; how poverty of spirit should breed a desire for spiritual riches; holy mourning for holy joy; meekness and patience under

injuries, for justice and right judgment. All these desires are comprehended in the expression "hungering and thirsting after righteousness; " and the peculiar blessing attributed to it by Christ is, that, contrary to most of the desires of men, it shall never fail of its end, but they who thus hunger and thirst shall be filled. We will trace it through its different branches and degrees, and endeavour to shew how this blessing accompanies it in all of them.

He who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, desires, in all his dealings and converse with men, that the strictest integrity and purity may be shewn; he desires to give his neighbour his strict right, in word as well as in deed, and his wish, (rather than his hope,) is, for the day when every man shall deal with his neighbour as in the presence of God, thus truly acting in the spirit of the petition, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." Now, even in this, the lowest form of the desire, does not it meet with its accomplishment? Do not all men put confidence in him in whose lips there is found no guile, and who is true and just in all his dealings? And does not the selfishness and overreaching spirit of the world receive a check in his presence, and, at least while he is by, put on the appearance of disinterestedness and truth? Thus, in some measure, even here is his pious desire fulfilled. But it is not in the dealings between man and man that we must look for his reward, or suppose his endeavours after righteousness to rest. If it were so, he would fall short of his object, and his reward of its preciousness. His desire that God's will may be done begins in the world of his own heart, in that inward council chamber where schemes of action are formed, that great place of traffic, where so many men buy the world and lose their souls. He is anxious that there should be none but fair dealings there that the worth of objects should not be estimated by their present desirableness to his passions, but by their

entire and well considered influence on the interests of his soul; not by the standard of man's varying judgment, but by the certain rule of God's unerring word. But he quickly finds that he is often deceived-that however careful he may be, his eyes are blinded by self-interest, and want of zeal for God, and a spirit of yielding to the world; and therefore it is to these defects that he applies his correcting hand. But he finds this work too great for him; it often baffles and defeats him it may be easy to keep back the outward acting of our feelings, and call our hands back when we would have put them forward; but to turn inwards upon one's self, to set bounds to a rising desire, to call up that confidence in God and His truth, which may enable us to stand firmly against the solicitations of the world, out of the barren unbelief and unsteadiness of our hearts,— this the hungerer and thirster after righteousness may try in vain unless he has been made partaker of a righteousness of a higher nature than his own. Besides which he will consider his frequent failures in these endeavours, not only as evidences of his want of strength, but as bars and hindrances to his success in future he will set them down to the score of his sins, and his progress will rather be to despair, than to enjoyment of his desire after holiness-such a hunger and thirst as this cannot be filled, but must consume itself away in empty cravings. Thus we come to that point to which I led you in our other meditations on these divine texts, where I shewed you that it was only of christian humility, christian mourning, and christian meekness, that these blessings were pronounced. But now, what a rich feast opens before us for the hungry and thirsty soul! we are no longer confined to the duties and circumstances of our intercourse with our fellow men, nor are our desires fixed in the fulfilment of our relation to them merely, or the mere balancing and governing our own feelings and judgment according to the will of God's law: we are now

taught to look to One who has been made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption ;-even to Christ, in Whom are contained all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, in Whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Now observe, as in the former cases, how every thing is altered. He who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is indeed blessed now. He has been received into the Church of Christ, which He hath purchased with His own blood-he can look on himself as one of His little ones, to whom it is the Father's good pleasure to give the kingdom. Instead of putting his progress towards holiness in the place of his Saviour's sacrifice, he makes that his foundation-he sees himself in Him crucified to the world, with Him risen unto God, and created anew unto good works. This new creation, this being received into the benefits and privileges of Christ's resurrection, is his ground of confidence and pillar of strength.

Now this his Saviour is made unto him wisdom-a right judgment in all things is His gift to His people, and comes to them not suddenly or with observation, but like all his gifts, in the course of humble striving after holiness; he who distrusted his own judgment and found himself continually going astray, now can judge rightly without fear: from his meditations on his Saviour's most holy life and blessed death, from this distrust of himself and looking to Him, he has learnt such lessons of heavenly meekness and discretion, that his spiritual sight is refined and sharpened, and we wonder how one who once, perhaps, fell indiscriminately on right and wrong alike,-now, by some marvellous power, is enabled to distinguish accurately the nicest difference of conduct; and, under the influence of that Spirit whose office is to guide into all truth, can mark out clearly his path of christian duty, through the obscure and tangled wilderness of this evil world. Here, then, his way to holiness is plain before him.

But Christ is also made to him righteonsness. He is not only the blessed object of his thoughts, the means of clearing his spiritual sight, but also the pattern of his imitation-the very righteousness after which he strives. In hungering and thirsting after righteousness, he hungers and thirsts after Christ. His love to the fallen race of man, His condescension in taking our nature and submitting to be as a man, His cross and passion, His death and burial, His resurrection and ascension; these are the objects to which he endeavours to attaincontinually striving that the same mind may be formed in him, which was also in Christ Jesus.

This same Christ is made unto him sanctification. The object of his meditation, the pattern of his imitation, is also the means whereby he is helped on towards it: it is not only his righteousness, but his holiness also. He has heard in Scripture of such a thing as the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, as the growing up to a perfect man in Christ and therefore, he is not content with remaining always at the threshold of the spiritual life, doubting whether he may go in or not; but knowing that he may have boldness to enter in by the blood of Jesus, he goes boldly through the outer courts and those where the common daily sacrifices are offered, even to the holiest place of all, nothing fearing or doubting. Christ is made unto him sanctification-here is the promise fulfilled to him at once. The same blessed object who raised his desire is Himself the fulfiller of it-in Him are his hunger and thirst for righteousness, and in Him he shall be filled. But Christ is made unto him redemption-here is a greater fulness still. The enjoyment of his Saviour here is partial and interrupted, compared to that which awaits him after the change of his mortal body. Although he meets Him, even here, at every turn of his way,—although His example, His command, and the gratitude due to Him are ever being brought before him;