If one should say, ’Alas, I am shut out from this blessing!  I am not pure in heart:  never shall I see God!’ here is another word from the same eternal heart to comfort him, making his grief its own consolation.  For this man also there is blessing with the messenger of the Father.  Unhappy men were we, if God were the God of the perfected only, and not of the growing, the becoming!  ‘Blessed are they,’ says the Lord, concerning the not yet pure, ’which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’  Filled with righteousness, they are pure; pure, they shall see God.

Long ere the Lord appeared, ever since man was on the earth, nay, surely, from the very beginning, was his spirit at work in it for righteousness; in the fullness of time he came in his own human person, to fulfil all righteousness.  He came to his own of the same mind with himself, who hungered and thirsted after righteousness.  They should be fulfilled of righteousness!

To hunger and thirst after anything, implies a sore personal need, a strong desire, a passion for that thing.  Those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, seek with their whole nature the design of that nature.  Nothing less will give them satisfaction; that alone will set them at ease.  They long to be delivered from their sins, to send them away, to be clean and blessed by their absence—­in a word to become men, God’s men; for, sin gone, all the rest is good.  It was not in such hearts, it was not in any heart that the revolting legal fiction of imputed righteousness arose.  Righteousness itself, God’s righteousness, rightness in their own being, in heart and brain and hands, is what they desire.  Of such men was Nathanael, in whom was no guile; such, perhaps, was Nicodemus too, although he did come to Jesus by night; such was Zacchaeus.  The temple could do nothing to deliver them; but, by their very futility, its observances had done their work, developing the desires they could not meet, making the men hunger and thirst the more after genuine righteousness:  the Lord must bring them this bread from heaven.  With him, the live, original rightness, in their hearts, they must speedily become righteous.  With that Love their friend, who is at once both the root and the flower of things, they would strive vigorously as well as hunger eagerly after righteousness.  Love is the father of righteousness.  It could not be, and could not be hungered after, but for love.  The lord of righteousness himself could not live without Love, without the Father in him.  Every heart was created for, and can live no otherwise than in and upon love eternal, perfect, pure, unchanging; and love necessitates righteousness.  In how many souls has not the very thought of a real God waked a longing to be different, to be pure, to be right!  The fact that this feeling is possible, that a soul can become dissatisfied with itself, and desire a change in itself, reveals God as an essential part of its being; for in itself the soul is aware that it cannot be what it would, what it ought—­that it cannot set itself right:  a need has been generated in the soul for which the soul can generate no supply; a presence higher than itself must have caused that need; a power greater than itself must supply it, for the soul knows its very need, its very lack, is of something greater than itself.