The first and lasting effect of
his words must be to make the hungering and thirsting long yet more. If
their passion grow to a despairing sense of the unattainable, a
hopelessness of ever gaining that without which life were worthless, let
them remember that the Lord congratulates the hungry and thirsty, so
sure does he know them of being one day satisfied. Their hunger is a
precious thing to have, none the less that it were a bad thing to retain
unappeased. It springs from the lack but also from the love of good, and
its presence makes it possible to supply the lack. Happy, then, ye
pining souls! The food you would have, is the one thing the Lord would
have you have, the very thing he came to bring you! Fear not, ye
hungering and thirsting; you shall have righteousness enough, though
none to spare--none to spare, yet enough to overflow upon every man. See
how the Lord goes on filling his disciples, John and Peter and James and
Paul, with righteousness from within! What honest soul, interpreting the
servant by the master, and unbiassed by the tradition of them that would
shut the kingdom of heaven against men, can doubt what Paul means by
'the righteousness which is of God by faith'? He was taught of Jesus
Christ through the words he had spoken; and the man who does not
understand Jesus Christ, will never understand his apostles. What
righteousness could St Paul have meant but the same the Lord would have
men hunger and thirst after--the very righteousness wherewith God is
righteous! They that hunger and thirst after such only righteousness,
shall become pure in heart, and shall see God.

If your hunger seems long in being filled, it is well it should seem
long. But what if your righteousness tarry, because your hunger after it
is not eager? There are who sit long at the table because their desire
is slow; they eat as who should say, We need no food. In things
spiritual, increasing desire is the sign that satisfaction is drawing
nearer. But it were better to hunger after righteousness for ever than
to dull the sense of lack with the husks of the Christian scribes and
lawyers: he who trusts in the atonement instead of in the father of
Jesus Christ, fills his fancy with the chimeras of a vulgar legalism,
not his heart with the righteousness of God.

Hear another like word of the Lord. He assures us that the Father hears
the cries of his elect--of those whom he seeks to worship him because
they worship in spirit and in t