kind of blessedness; but it is better to long for a higher—­though it be unattained—­good than to be content with a lower which is possessed.  Better to climb, though the summit be far and the path be steep, than to browse amongst the herds in the fat valleys.  Aspiration is blessedness when it is worthily directed.  Let us, then, look at these two points of this Beatitude; this divine hunger of the soul, and its satisfaction which is sure.

I. Note, then, the hunger which is blessed.

Now ‘righteousness’ has come to be a kind of theological term which people use without attaching any very distinct meaning to it.  And it would be little improvement to substitute for ‘righteousness’ the abstraction of moral conformity to the will of God.  Suppose we try to turn the words of my text into modern English, and instead of saying, ‘Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness,’ say, Blessed are the men and women that long more than for anything else to be good.  Does not that sound a little more near our daily lives than the well-worn and threadbare word of my text?  Righteousness is neither more nor less than in spirit a will submitted to God, and in conduct the practice of whatsoever things are noble and lovely and of good report.

The production of such a character, the aiming after the perfection of spirit and of conduct, is the highest aim that a man can set before him.  There are plenty of other hungers of the soul that are legitimate.  There are many of them that are bracing and ennobling and elevating.  It is impossible not to hunger for the supply of physical necessities.  It is good to long for love, for wisdom.  It is better to long most to be good men and women.  For what are we here for?  To enjoy?  To work?  To know?  Yes!  But it is not conduct, and it is still less thought, and it is least of all enjoyment, in any of its forms, which is the purpose of life, and ought to be our aim here upon earth.  We are here to learn to be; and the cultivation and production of characters that lie parallel with the will of God is the Omega of all our life in the flesh.  All these other things, even the highest of them, the yearning desire

    ’To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
     Beyond the furthest bounds of human thought,’

ought to be subordinate to this further purpose of being good men and women.  All these are scaffolding; the building is a character conformed to God’s will and assimilated to Christ’s likeness.

That commends itself as a statement of man’s chief end to all reasonable and thoughtful men in their deepest and truest moments.  And so, whilst we must let our desires go out on the lower levels, and seek to draw to ourselves the various gifts that are necessary for the various phases and sides of our being, here is one that a man’s own conscience tells him should stand clearly supreme and dominant—­the hunger and thirst after righteousness.