and, in truth, most sinful.”  What is the difference?  This difference:  there wants here the touch of genius; there wants the touch of life divine, grace that illuminates the moral law; there wants, my friends, the enthusiasm for goodness, the science of sciences, the art of arts, the delight and the desire of doing right because it is right, the great and splendid spirit that belongs to all of us; and yet it is the highest when the thirst of your soul is real.  Certainly it is to know God’s guidance in law; but what is law?  It is to grasp that atmosphere of life and reality which comes out of the moral law to those who seek it in a living person first—­the desire of goodness, the desire, the love, the enthusiasm, the ambition, cost what it may, of doing right because it is right.  Oh, my friends, I submit—­and I submit it without fear of contradiction—­that is an ambition worthy of Englishmen.  Certainly we are not dreamers; certainly God has given us practical activity; certainly, whatever we misunderstand, this we can understand, the thirst of the soul for God is the thirst to love goodness because it is right.

And then hastily to conclude, I would say that that thirst is exprest, that that thirst is satisfied, not only in moral law and in its atmosphere, but in one thing more that I think we can all understand.  When we read the New Testament, so simple, so straightforward, so true, so beautiful, with some difficulties, but no difficulties that a true heart can find insuperable—­when we read the New Testament we are brought face to face with the teachings of Christ.  And there is this, my friends, more about these teachings, that if you are to follow them out you have not time enough in time; the teachings of our Master demand eternity—­there is something about them infinite, so simple, so beautiful, and yet we feel that we are insufficient to fulfil them in this sphere of time.  If my soul is athirst for God, it is athirst for the fulfilment of those great, splendid, practical teachings which remind me that I am to begin to learn my lesson in this narrow school, but that I shall fulfil my achievement in that great land beyond the grave.  Is that enough?  No; no, when the heart is lonely; no, when the sun is setting; no, when the clouds are gathering round us; no, when the storm is coming up.  It is useless for the preacher, if he tries to be real, to talk about law, or the result of law, or the splendor of teaching; if we know the human heart in its width and its activity, if it is to find satisfaction it must find it in a personal life.  You may say you cannot know God.  That is the ordinary answer of the human sinning heart, which in modern times calls itself agnostic.  Know God!  Well, of course it is truly said that it is by mere license of speech when you talk of knowledge about human perceptions—­it is wisely said.  You perceive a fact, my friend; you must perceive it in itself, and as it is, and by an intellect that can infallibly state that it is so and in that manner.