, we read, 'Behold, I stand at
the door and knock.' The image is there employed to set forth the
tenderness and patience of the exalted Christ, who condescends to sue
for entrance into every human heart, and comes in with His hands full of
blessing. Now, it is very striking, I think, that the same symbol is
employed in this text in reference to _our_ duty. There is such a thing
as our knocking at some door for entrance and blessing. What is that
knocking?

The answer which is popularly given, I suppose, is that all these three
injunctions in our text, 'Ask--seek--knock,' are but diverse aspects of
the one exhortation to prayerfulness. And that may, perhaps, exhaust
their meaning; but I am rather disposed to think that it is possible to
trace a difference and a climax in them. _To ask_ is obviously to apply
to a person who can give, and that is prayer. _To seek_ is not, as I
think, quite the same thing, but rather expresses the idea of effort,
the personal effort which ought to accompany and will accompany all real
prayer. And _to knock_ possibly adds to the conception of prayer and of
effort, the idea, as common to both of them, of a certain persistency
and continuity born of earnestness. So that we have here, as I think, a
threefold statement of the conditions under which certain great
blessings are given, and a threefold exhortation as to our Christian
duty.

I. In considering these words I would first inquire to whom such
exhortations are rightly addressed.

Now, it is to be remembered that these words occur in that great
discourse of our Lord's which is called the Sermon on the Mount. And for
the right understanding of that great embodiment of Christian morality,
and of its relations to the whole body of Christian truth, it is, I
think, very needful to remember that the Sermon on the Mount is
addressed to Christ's disciples, that it is the promulgation of the laws
of the kingdom by the King for His subjects; that it presupposes
discipleship and entrance into the kingdom, and has not a word to say
about the method of entrance. So that, though very many of its
exhortations are but the republication in nobler form of the common laws
of morality which are binding upon all men, and may be addressed to all
men, the form in which they appear in that Sermon, the connection in
which they stand, the height to which they are elevated, and the
motives by which they are enforced, all limit their application to men
who are tr