SERMON II.  THE DIVINE HUNGER AND THIRST

(Preached before the Queen.)

Psalm xxxvi. 7, 8, 9.  How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.  They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.  For with thee is the fountain of life:  in thy light shall we see light.

This is a great saying.  So great that we shall never know, certainly never in this life, how much it means.

It speaks of being satisfied; of what alone can satisfy a man.  It speaks of man as a creature who is, or rather ought to be, always hungering and thirsting after something better than he has, as it is written:  ’Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.’  So says David, also, in this Psalm.

I say man ought to be always hungering and thirsting for something better.  I do not mean by that that he ought to be discontented.  Nothing less.  For just in as far as a man hungers and thirsts after righteousness and truth, he will hunger and thirst after nothing else.  As long as a man does not care for righteousness, does not care to be a better man himself, and to see the world better round him, so long will he go longing after this fine thing and that, tormenting himself with lusts and passions, greediness and covetousness of divers sorts; and little satisfaction will he get from them.  But, when he begins to hunger and thirst after righteousness, that heavenly and spiritual hunger destroys the old carnal hunger in him.  He cares less and less to ask, What shall I eat and drink, wherewithal shall I be clothed?—­Or how shall I win for myself admiration, station, and all the fine things of this world?—­What he thinks of more and more is,—­How can I become better and more righteous?  How can I make my neighbours better likewise?  How the world?  As for the good things of this life, if they will make me a better man, let them come.  If not, why should I care so much about them?  What I want is, to be righteous like God, beneficent and good-doing like God.

That is the man of whom it is written, that he shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of God’s house, God’s kingdom; for with God is the fountain of life.

Again, as long as a man has no hunger and thirst after truth, he is easily enough interested, though he is not satisfied.  He reads, perhaps, and amuses his fancy, but he does no more.  He reads again, really to instruct his mind, and learns about this and that:  but he does not learn the causes of things; the reasons of the chances and changes of this world; and so he is not satisfied; he takes up doctrines, true ones, perhaps, at secondhand out of books and out of sermons:, without having had any personal experience of them; and so, when sickness