RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 199, 20 August 1904, Page 10

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

vv__.T MAKES LIFE HAPPY.

I By BISHOP THORNTON. Vicar of Brackb——

"Blessed are ye that lrungcir now: for ye Shall he titled, ltli-bsed are ye that wee) uuw Co. j'i siiul. Uni^h." •Woe u-ntj you that are full! fur ye shall tti'iiL.ci'. \- oe unto you thai luiuh now: /or ye snail mourn aud weep."—Lake vi. 21, lilt is an im_cniori— question —What wiil make a man's nle bapp> V And on thai, quesi.on evtry human being has a:i opi ' -on. tie mij never have forum luted caul opinion; be may not be de linnciy cun.scious tint he has ever formed one —but every ti.au has done, so; and that opinion of his. held in solution in his daily life, will u.s surely give its character to all that ILU ua the salt that saturates them gives its flavour to the waters of the sea. IS'ow, on this irrepressible question the greatest Teacher humanity has evei known spoke His mind very plainly. Indeed, it was the lirst topki on which Jesus Christ preached —if, as is generally supposed, the "Sermon ou the iMount" was the opening discourse ot His ministry; and so fundamentad did He consider His teaching about it to be that He repeated much of it in a slightly altered form on another prominent occasion, in the so-called "Sermon on the Plain." He days, beyond all possibility oi mistake, and He reiterates the saying. "Woe to the full—woe to the laughers —blessed are the hungry'—blessed are they that mourn." We have here two not merely different, but mutually contradictory, theories of human happiness —philosophies of human life, i do not ccc how it is possible ior any man to agree with both. A "forLiuie," which in itself only means a s two as that has befailen, always is taken to signify a large sum o.i money. Un the other hand, a moneyless man i's said not to have "a six pence ho bless himself with." as though coiu and blessing were equivalents; and when a man loses the money he may have accumulated he is said to be "ruined." But if the ci.. i ing to be rich is one of the commonest, it is one of .the meanest forms of earthly ambition; and our text rather appl.es to other and higher kinds of -it, poverty having • separate "beatitude" to itself. Ambition m-.iy begin very early in life, and very innocently. The child covets a prize at school, the youth an athletic trophy, the- young man academic honours. Later he may long to make a lucky stroke in business; a successful hit in art or authorship; may desire place und power in some public •body—in Parliament, in Government, a decoration or a title; things like these dangle alluringly before the full-grown man and his aspirations. "If I can just get that, I shall be satisfied," he thinks, about some such object of desire. Well, we will supprse he does get "that": he is "full" now; his ambition so far is gratified; and in the ■world's judgment he is a buppy man. "Whose drinketh of these waters shall thirst again!" !Nlen who have enjoyed the best opportunity of trying this world's recipe for happiness—a Solomon, an Augustine, a Wolsey, a Chesterfield, a Napoleon, a Vanderbilt— have left on record bow complete they found its uki'mafp failure. Oh! the restless wretchedness of the blase devotee of this world's satisfactions in his closing years! "But," says Jesua, "Blessed are ye that hunger now!" For saintliness, too. has its ambitions; and they are intense—but not for earthly honours; many of the holies! ajnong men have been competent, indeed, to win the grandest of these; but a loftier passion has swayed their sijtils, superseding all meaner cravings; they pant after nobler things than the proudest earthly distinction that ever set one worm of the dust nominally above his fellows! They "hunger and thirst after righteousness." They long, above all things, to be holy. They yearn to be like Christ. Tn their inmost souls they find this world a barren place; they canrrot be content without bread from Heaven to eat—they thirst for sweet, stolen waters that this world knows not of. Happy hunger! Blessed thirst! But why? Because it is the sure pledge of its own 'ever-growing satisfaction. "Ye shall be filled." A servant of Christ is unhungered-.for this world does not satisfy his spirit, nor has he yet by any means attained all that he tonga after—but though so far unsatisfied he is not dissatisfied; there is no hopeless pining fever in his huno- Pr and thirst; they only give a keener relish to those gracious refreshments by the way, which, though this world thinks scorn of them, proclaim in happy foretaste that a fuller satisfaction is nt band. For H-envenlv desire is itself an earnest of a heavenly destiny. "Ye shall be filled." The word used here is a different one from that which expressed the filling up once for all of earthly ambition: literally it denotes ?J° Un Idant1 dant pasturage. It reminds one of the Royal shepherd's song, "I shall not ■want. He maketh mc to lie down in green pastures; he leatleth mc beside Btill waters. My cup runneth over!" Do we thirst after holiness? Do we feel hungry, in the way Jesus means? Such thirst and hunger is the movement of the inner life, showing that it is astir! The reality of spiritual life is proved not so much by its self-satisfactions, as by its cravings. Where there is no present comfort and joy, there may be spiritual life, but where there is no inward want and unsatisfied longing death must be at work! ° ° Now, what are we to understand by this next strange doctrine—the lleatitnde of Mourners? "Blessed are ye that weep now." Of course, this is tersely and spoken, and must not he misinterpreted. We are not whitWing away the stern substance of Christ's words for a moment when we confidently declare that He meant no honour here to moody melancholy, or a sour asceticism, still lass to whining querulonsness. He Who said this began His ministry by assisting at a wedding festivity, and we are certain, from what we are told about His doings there that He never stood gloomily in a corner, scowling at the songs and *. garlands, the banquet, and the danrin-. n They began to be merry," ia His picattire of the Prodigal's welcome home- "it W , m » 6t TT We Should make me "y, «nd be ■ glad, He makes his fathei say O V tins true Son of Man. thougfih Hi.ns.-lf I (not without reason, ns we ought ' to know!) a Man nf Sorrows, with all innocent human mirth is in deep real sympathy! And yet. tnv readers.'in a world like this Christ's true disciples would be more correctly d scribed— would thei not?—as mmi-niiv/ ones th::n ns 'fnigl.i.i -~-,■• v \ . - ..; ... (>'■' ..,,'. they get their full hare of the griefs un.: bulled ,-» ~ mi..on m this life to ll!,..:-, .; | ~ . . nion p.ji-i .v.. ~.,. , .' ~ ,'' / ■ "''\ ( -' : " ls1 '!>' ■* "i. f< i- ,;,. v ~,., c their gl-o-fi-. .mil d»-"i|>linp 1i....r choroptpr

and deaden their 'worldly affections, and draw out their Christian sympathy towards other sufferers. But, beyond theie, Christ's servant, as such, has sorrows of his own. He mourns over his own sins, and does battle with them; he mourns over the griefs of others, and labours to alleviate Lhem; he mourns over the wrongs that are done in the world, and toils to set them right! Well, such weepers shall, one day, surely laugh! Their present sorrows are compatible with an inward peace of which the mere laughter can icuow nothing: and meanwhile, in front of them, always, is joy! O, they would not have their discipline or grief withheld for a moment! "(live mc present sorrow, and my joys in the future." cries the Christian's heart; "let my weeping be now, and my laughing comes afterwards, when they that have sown if tears shall reap in smiles, and the heaviness that endured for the night -hall give place to the joy that cometh in the eternal morning!" In constructing our philosophy of life ;ill turns upon our point of view. Is it the now, or the then, which we really are living for? O, if this world were all — if to-day were man's chief portion— then blessed indeed are those already lull—blessed are they that laugh: woe to the hungry, and the weepers! Alna for us, If thou wert all. And nought beyond, O earth. But if this our earthly time be planned as only "a winter's morn to a bright, endless year;" if eternal life is really the destiny God intends for mc; if time is short, and this life utterly precarious; if the world and the fashion of it is certain to pass away; if death is surely near; and if the judgment is inevitable, and if Christ be true, then 0 let my lot be with these hungry ones, and my portion with these weeping ones! For it is just God's people that are thus described, and is there one of us that does not in his heart of hearts desire to be of them? Only, let us remember that if we would reach the • 'hristian's goal, we must run the race: if his future is to be ours, we must embrace his present: must, through grace, be aliendy numbered among Christ's true people upon earth, if we would be numbered with God's saints in glory everlasting.