In the multitude of your
desires within you, what share and what proportion go out and up to
Christ? You know what beauty is. You know and you love the beauty of a
child, of a woman, of a man, of nature, of art, and so on. Do you know,
have you ever seen, the ineffable beauty of Christ? Is there one saint
of God here,--and He has many saints here--is there one of you who can
say with David in the text, One thing do I desire? There should be many
so desiring saints here; for Christ's beauty is far better and far
fairer, far more captivating, far more enthralling, and far more
satisfying to us than it could be to David. Shall we call you Desires-
awake, then, after this? Can you say--do you say, One thing do I desire,
and that is no thing and no person, no created beauty and no earthly
sweetness, but my one desire is for God: to be His, and to be like Him,
and to be for ever with Him? Then, it shall soon all be. For, what you
truly desire,--all that you already are; and what you already are,--all
that you shall soon completely and for ever be. Whom have I in heaven
but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My
flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my
portion for ever.

'As for me,' says the great-hearted, the hungry-hearted Psalmist, 'I
shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.' One would have
said that David had all that heart could desire even before he fell
asleep. For he had a throne, the throne of Israel, and a son, a son like
Solomon to sit upon it. A long life also, full to the brim of all kinds
of temporal and spiritual blessings. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
forget not all His benefits; who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who
healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who
crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy
mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.
All that, and yet not satisfied! O David! David! surely Desires-awake is
thy new name! One of our own poets has said:--

'All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed His sacred flame.'

Now, if that is true, as it is true, even of earthly and ephemeral love,
how much more true is it of the love that is in the immortal soul of man
for the everlasting God? And what a blessed life that already is when
all