er the Christian Church, and one looks--which is more to the
purpose--into one's own heart, and contrasts the tepid, the lazy, the
occasional, and, I am afraid, the only half-sincere wishes to be better,
with the unmistakable earnestness and reality of our longings to be
rich, or wise, or prosperous, or famous, or happy in our domestic
relationships, and the like. Alas! alas! that the whole current of the
great river of so many professing Christians' desires runs towards earth
and creatures, and the tiniest little trickle is taken off, like a lade
for a mill, from the great stream, and directed towards higher things.
It is hunger and thirst after righteousness that is blessed. You and I
can tell whether our desires deserve such a name as that.

II. And now, secondly, the satisfying of this divine hunger of the soul.

'They shall be filled,' says our Lord. Now all these promises appended
to the Beatitudes have a double reference--to the certainty of the
present, and to the perfection of the future. That there is such a
double reference may be made very obvious if we notice that the first of
the promises, which includes them all, and of which the others are but
aspects and phases, is cast into the present tense, whilst the remainder
stand in the future. 'Theirs _is_ the Kingdom of Heaven,' not _shall
be_--'they _shall be_ comforted,' they '_shall_ inherit the earth,' and
so on. So, then, we are warranted, indeed we are obliged, to regard this
great promise in the text as having two epochs of fulfilment--one
partially here upon earth, one complete hereafter. And these two differ,
not in kind, but in degree.

So then, with regard even to the present, 'they shall be filled.' Should
not that be a gospel to the seeking spirit of man, who knows so well
what it is to be crucified with the pangs of a vain desire, and to set
his heart upon that which never comes into his hands? There is one
region in which nothing is so impossible as that any desire should be in
vain, or any wish should be unfulfilled, and it is the region into which
Christ points us in these great words of my text. Turn away from earth,
where fulfilled desires and unfulfilled are often equally disappointed
ones. Turn away from the questionable satisfactions which come to those
whose hearts go out in longing for love, wisdom, wealth, transitory
felicity; and be sure of this, that the one longing which never will be
disappointed, nor, when answered, will prove to