SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 June 1925, Page 15

SUNDAY READING.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. NO. 7.—THE BEATITUDE OF DESIRE “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”—St. Matthew v., 6. (Rev. A. H. Collins.) There are three words in this passage that supply the clue to its meaning—the words “hunger” and “righteousness” and “filled.” Hunger means desire, righteousness means goodness, filled means satisfied. Hence we may read thes Beatitude, “Blessed are they that desire to be good for they shall be satisfied.” The translator of “the Twentieth Century New Testament” has caught the idea and rendered the text, “Happy are those that hunger and thirst for the Right, for it is they who will be plentifully fed.” Dr. Moffatt is better still, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for goodness! They will be satisfied.” Desire—goodness—satisfied. If 1 can put a bit of life and reality into these three words, our study will prove memorable. HUNGER AND THIRST. This is the Beatitude of Desire. It deals with elemental appetites. There are no desires more intense than genuine hunger and thirst. Nature’s first and insistent demand is represented by these two words. Appetite for food and drink is the first evidence of independent existence; and we never outgrow- these cravings until we sink into the coma which precedes physical dissolution. In a sense very real and deep, hunger and thirst are the driving force behind life. The military maxim which says that “an army moves on its stomach,” is true of the march of civilisation. Trade flourishes, nations advance, the arts and sciences develop, because of the existence of these physical sensations. The nations which do not “lack and suffer” hunger because their bread grows on trees above their heads, and water flows in rivers at their feet, are the backward nations with the poorest manhood. It is a biological law that no creature can develop beyond the line of its felt needs. The lower animals have few wants, and when these are satisfied, their energies drop into quiescience. The fewer the wants of a race or a community the slower its progress and the cruder its culture. The history of civilisation is the history of the evolution of new hungers and thirsts. Our industry, our arts, our social and political and religious institutions are the fruits of the widening and deepening of our desires. The higher and the richer our wants become, the fuller and fairer, and the more rapid, is our advancement in the scale of being. We begin with the flesh, but we are made perfect in the spirit. The physical sensations of hunger and thirst are only a beginning. The body craves for fo.od, and the mind hungers for knowledge; the eye desires beauty; the ear music; the heart love; the soul pants for God. And the very existence of these appetites is proof that the Creator has provided for their satisfaction. “Nothing walks with aimless feet.” Desires are not given to torment us. Our hunger and thirst are prophetic. Faber strikes the true note:

There’s not a craving in the mind Thou dost not meet and still; There’s not a wish the heart can have Which Thou dost not fulfil. All things that have been, all that are, All things that can be dreamed, All possible creations matte, Kept faithful, or redeemed. All these may draw upon Thy power, Thy mercy may command; And still outflank Thy silent sea, Immutable and grand. OUR DOMINANT DESIRES. This also needs to be said, that our dominant desires are revelations. We classify nations and individuals by their ruling passions. Rome craved power, Greece craved beauty in tone and tint, Spain sought chivalry, France pleasure, Germany learning, Britain trade. One man seeks gain, another pleasure, another knowledge, another power. Seek either in legitimate ways, and with lawful intensity, and life is ordered and full and blessed. That- is the teaching of the Beatitude; and that is the teaching of the Holy • Book from end to end, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst.” “Lessen your wants if you would attain peace,” cried the stoic; life consists in self-repression.” Jesus never said that. He said the reverse. He said this is God’s glad world. He wants you to inherit and enjoy the good things of which it is full. His word was not repression, but selection. “Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is no bread and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Harken diligently unto Me and eat ye that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” ISO then in the most literal sense, and on the lowest plane it is true to say that hunger and thirst are good; for these are spurs to endeavour and achievement; and directly a people cease to hunger and thirst for progress, truth, freedom they go down. The dead have no appetite, the invalid grows mincing, the healthy and vigorous hunger and thirst for’food for the body, the mind, the soul. GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS. The second word is righteousness; but that word sounds technical and theological. It seems remote, like the glittering peak of the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau. It is very beautiful, but far away, and our stumbling feet can never scale such lofty heights. “How can a man be righteous before God?” ISO we have recourse to “a legal fiction” and think of righteousness as “imputed” rather than imparted—a fair robe which covers up rather than a new spirit. But the word “righteousness” was originally spelt “rightwiseness.” It meant “being in the right way.” Righteousness was conformity to the standard of right; and the standard of right was God Himself. The righteousness of God is the

“rightwiseness” of God, His perfect conformity to that which is right and good. The righteousness of a man is the “rightwiseness” of the man, his coming up io the standard. The words righteous and holiness mean the same thing, only the one refers to character and the other to conduct. Imagine a man to .be like God in character and that would he a holy man; imagine a man to do what God does and -i-that man would be But all that sounds what some folk call “dreadfully the<? logical, and instead of the antique wqiA

suppose we put it into modern English and say,' “Blessed are the men and women who desire to be good above everything else.” Righteousness is goodness, and goodness is not something put on, like a garment; it is something that springs up, like the fruit that glow’s out of the sap of the tree. It is character which expresses itself in conduct. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Goodness is no “legal fiction”; it is actual. A man is a good man, just so far as his conduct is good. “For forms of faith Let gracious zealots fight. He can’t be wrong Whose life is in the right.” THE PASSION FOR GODDNESS. But ye are not saved by definitions. It is one thing to know the right and quite another thing to make goodness the dominant desire of life; to “hunger and thirst” after goodness as the body craves food. You know how under circumstances of shortage of food; how under tropic suns or adrift on polar seas hunger and thirst will leap into terrible empire, and men will fignt and slay with demoniacal fury, and all the humanities of life break down, under the onslaught of hunger and thirst. Does it not sound farcical to speak of our desire to be good men and women, being comparable to that? But is it not true that we should be “lbleased” if we hungered for goodness that way? Look out on the world and the church, or, what is better still, let us look into our own heart and say how our passion for goodness compares with our passion for some other things which may not be positively wrong and yet we know are not first things. I am not speaking as one who has earned the right to upbraid and blame, God forbid; but isn’t it true that our desire to have some other things is a painful contrast to our tepid and occasional desire to be good and sincere and loyal followers of Jesus Christ? We try to explain it in various ways, and all the time the plain fact is we don’t hunger and thirst for goodness. THE COUNSEL OF PRUDENCE. If you know Mark Rutherford’s book, “The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane,” you will remember a fine chapter which describes a scene in the little Pike Street chapel. Mr. Bradshaw is the preacher, and he has chosen as his text the words,* “Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offering in every place thou seest, but in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, shalt thou offer thy burnt offering.”—T>eut. xii., 13, 14. The wise old minister expounds the text, and says it meant, Reserve yourself! Do not squander yourself! Keep your worship for the Highest! Don’t put your possessions or yourself on every way-side altar, but oiler your love and service and adoration to the God Who made you. It would seem to be the counsel of prudence. A man does not concern himself about household coal when he can traffic in diamonds. When his house is in flames, he will not think of his goods but of his children. “No man in his wits would set the superb genius of Raphael to paint a barn door, or engage Dante to write an election squib, or ask Mozart to compose a score for a jazz band. IMen don’t construct steam hammers to crack nuts or build stately palaces to house pigs. To do such things would betray a lack of proportion; a false emphasis, a lack of perspective. Y r et men are hot in the pursuit of little and perishable things, and quite oblivious of the august and splendid things which make for goodness. -Some of the things men seek so feverishly are not wrong; but they are second rate. Who that has ever read Bunyan’s description of the man with the muck-rake, can ever forget it, and if you have seen Noel Paton’s vital and disconcerting canvas of the same thing, it will haunt you. It is so uncanny! A man wildly looking for straws, under the shadow of a golden crown! Searching for rusty nails and bits of old iron in presence of the angels and God’s Holy Sbn. Fine powers devoted to little things! The spirit enslaved to the trivial! The soul captured by the spell of the meretricious! An eagle chained to a gate post! “Reserve yourself,” said the preacher in Tanner’s Lane. Dedicate the soul’s rarest capacity to the things that match the soul. Live up to the highest. 'Be loyal to the golden visions and the glorious hours of life “Covet earnestly the best gifts.” “Blessed are they that hunger for goodness.” life. First things put in the first place.

CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION LIMITLESS. Tn saying this, I refuse to be the slave of narrow interpretations. I decline imprisonment in a contracted formula. Life is a great and splendid sacrament. The world is wide and wonderful. Jesus Christ is a lordly Master, and Teacher and Saviour of ample reach and range and power. -His salvation is wide and deep as human need. The Christian redemption is not limited, it is limitless, and our little definitions do not define. The Christian calling is a great summons. There is nothing pinched and parochial about it. It supplies the tonic of big things, big thoughts, big tasks, big lives. 'Our little schemes are dwarfed in the light of God’s infinite grace; and our little thoughts of the Cross are as pale ghosts in the presence of the great reality. “How good is man’s life, the mere living! How fit to employ, all the heart And the soul and the senses For ever in joy.” And to hunger and thirst after goodness is to desire the best life can get in this world and in all worlds. THE LONGING SATISFIED. My final word is that this dominant desire for goodness has the promise and plege of being satisfied. Even now and here the longing is satisfied. To follow goodness as the lode star of the heart; to put God first and resolutely and courageously follow His guiding hand, is to enter into strength and peace; for the man who does that enters into, an alliance with the will and purpose of the Almighty. It does not mean the end of struggle and pain. It is no idler’s task. It is hard to train the eye to this constant vision, and discipline the heart to this highest loyalty. “Let no man think that sudden in a minute, All is accomplished, and the work is done; Though with thine, earliest dawn thou should’st begin it Scarce were it ended in the setting sun.” Yet there is. satisfaction, step by. step, and the one thing that should concern us is not have we. attained the goal,

bxit do we want to get there? For desire will Jive in heaven, and the spirits of the just made perfect, will still be capable of fuller, rich life. ‘-One star differeth from another star in glory.” We shall desire and still grow. ®ut “I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness.”