with which a good man gazes when he feels that he has done his duty, tho the world can see that he has failed—­I remember talking to him on such questions as these, and what he said, among other things, was this:  “In dealing with mankind and in dealing with yourself you must rise by degrees, you must advance from point to point; there is a point of achievement, but you cannot reach the point of achievement unless you have gone up the ladder of progress.”  I follow his advice.  What do we mean by thirsting for God?  My friends, on the lower round of that ladder, I mean thirsting for and desiring moral truth.  I mean that the soul within you is thirsting and imploring for the satisfaction of its moral instincts.  Turn for an instant to the ten commandments; they are trite, they are ordinary, they are placed before you in the east end of your church, after the old custom of your practical, unaesthetic, and undreaming England.  Ask what they mean.  Turn to the second table.  You are to reverence your father and mother.  Why?  Because they are the instruments of life that God gives.  You are to reverence life in others in the sixth commandment.  Why?  Because life is the deepest mystery that God can possibly exhibit to you.  In the seventh commandment—­I scarcely like to say, but yet it is wise to repeat, it is necessary to assert it—­we are to remember, you and I, when we are young, when we are active, when we are passionate, the great responsibility of man; you are not to trifle with that awful mystery, the transmission of life, life which unites itself with eternal love.  You are to remember respect for property, for that which divine providence has placed by wise laws in the hands of others.  You are to remember that the best of properties is a good character.  Finally, in the tenth commandment, you are not to forget that divine providence guides you, and you are not to murmur and be angry when He guides you who knows the best for you, and when you have done your best.  And rising from the second table and coming to the first, you are not to forget that there is one object for every soul, as the text asserts.  You are not to forget that a jealousy may be created, ought to be created, if you put anything before God.  You are not to grudge God the restraint of speech, and—­thank God, still it is possible to appeal to the wise instincts of England—­you are not to grudge on your Sunday the gift of your time.  These are the outlines of the grave moral law that runs deep into the heart of the Christian; and I answer, the thirst for God means the thirst within me to fulfil that grave moral law.

But, my friends, pause for a moment.  After all, that would only be a skeleton.  After all, simply to draw out the outlines of a picture is not the work of an artist.  Suppose you ask a master in music, “How am I to produce the real result of stately sound?” He will tell you about the common cord; he will tell you about the result of its changes and its affinities, and will speak of those results as