God made man, and woke in him the hunger for righteousness; the Lord came to enlarge and rouse this hunger.  The first and lasting effect of his words must be to make the hungering and thirsting long yet more.  If their passion grow to a despairing sense of the unattainable, a hopelessness of ever gaining that without which life were worthless, let them remember that the Lord congratulates the hungry and thirsty, so sure does he know them of being one day satisfied.  Their hunger is a precious thing to have, none the less that it were a bad thing to retain unappeased.  It springs from the lack but also from the love of good, and its presence makes it possible to supply the lack.  Happy, then, ye pining souls!  The food you would have, is the one thing the Lord would have you have, the very thing he came to bring you!  Fear not, ye hungering and thirsting; you shall have righteousness enough, though none to spare—­none to spare, yet enough to overflow upon every man.  See how the Lord goes on filling his disciples, John and Peter and James and Paul, with righteousness from within!  What honest soul, interpreting the servant by the master, and unbiassed by the tradition of them that would shut the kingdom of heaven against men, can doubt what Paul means by ‘the righteousness which is of God by faith’?  He was taught of Jesus Christ through the words he had spoken; and the man who does not understand Jesus Christ, will never understand his apostles.  What righteousness could St Paul have meant but the same the Lord would have men hunger and thirst after—­the very righteousness wherewith God is righteous!  They that hunger and thirst after such only righteousness, shall become pure in heart, and shall see God.

If your hunger seems long in being filled, it is well it should seem long.  But what if your righteousness tarry, because your hunger after it is not eager?  There are who sit long at the table because their desire is slow; they eat as who should say, We need no food.  In things spiritual, increasing desire is the sign that satisfaction is drawing nearer.  But it were better to hunger after righteousness for ever than to dull the sense of lack with the husks of the Christian scribes and lawyers:  he who trusts in the atonement instead of in the father of Jesus Christ, fills his fancy with the chimeras of a vulgar legalism, not his heart with the righteousness of God.

Hear another like word of the Lord.  He assures us that the Father hears the cries of his elect—­of those whom he seeks to worship him because they worship in spirit and in truth.  ’Shall not God avenge his own elect,’ he says, ‘which cry day and night unto him?’ Now what can God’s elect have to keep on crying for, night and day, but righteousness?  He allows that God seems to put off answering them, but assures us he will answer them speedily.  Even now he must be busy answering their prayers; increasing hunger is the best possible indication that he is doing so.  For some divine reason it is well they should not yet know in themselves that he is answering their prayers; but the day must come when we shall be righteous even as he is righteous; when no word of his will miss being understood because of our lack of righteousness; when no unrighteousness shall hide from our eyes the face of the Father.