ate to this further purpose of being good men and
women. All these are scaffolding; the building is a character conformed
to God's will and assimilated to Christ's likeness.

That commends itself as a statement of man's chief end to all reasonable
and thoughtful men in their deepest and truest moments. And so, whilst
we must let our desires go out on the lower levels, and seek to draw to
ourselves the various gifts that are necessary for the various phases
and sides of our being, here is one that a man's own conscience tells
him should stand clearly supreme and dominant--the hunger and thirst
after righteousness.

Still further, notice how this desire, on which our Lord pronounces His
benediction, comes in a series. I know that all men have latent, and
sometimes partially and fragmentarily operative in their lives and
manifest on the surface, sporadic desires after goodness. The existence
of these draws the line between man and devil. And there is no soul on
earth which has not sometimes felt the longing to be better than it is,
to its own consciousness, to-day. But the yearning which our Lord
blesses comes after, and is the result of, the previous characteristics
which He has described. There must be the poverty of spirit which
recognises our own insufficiency and unworthiness; or, to put it into
simpler words, we must know ourselves to be sinners. There must be the
mourning which follows upon that revelation of ourselves; the penitence
which does not wash away sin, but which makes us capable of receiving
forgiveness. There must be the comfort which comes from pardon received;
and there must be the yielding of ourselves to the Supreme Will, which
is the true root of all meekness, in the face of antagonism from
creatures and of opposition from circumstances. When thus a man's
self-conceit is beaten out of him, and he knows how far he is from the
possession of any real, deep righteousness of his own; and when,
further, his heart has glowed with the consciousness of forgiveness; and
when, further, his will has bowed itself before the Father in heaven,
then there will spring in his heart a hungering and thirsting, deeper
far and far more certain of fruition, than ever can be realised in
another heart, a stranger to such experiences. Brethren, if we are ever
to possess the righteousness which is itself blessed, it must be because
we have the hunger and the thirst which are sharpened and accentuated by
profound discovery of