possession of our hearts.  Now, to begin with, how is it with your desires?  You are afraid to say much about your expectations and your hopes.  Well; let us come to your hearts’ desires.—­Men of God, I will enter into your hearts and I will tell you your hearts’ desires better than you know them yourselves; for the heart is deceitful above all things.  The time was, when, like this young pilgrim before he became a pilgrim, your desires were all set on houses, and lands, and places, and honours, and preferments, and wives, and children, and silver, and gold, and what not.  These things at one time were the utmost limit of your desires.  But that has all been changed.  For now you have begun to desire a better city, that is, an heavenly.  What is your chief desire for this New Year? {2} Is it not a new heart?  Is it not a clean heart?  Is it not a holy heart?  Is it not that the Holy Ghost would write the golden rule on the tables of your heart?  Does not God know that it is the deepest desire of your heart to be able to love your neighbour as yourself?  To be able to rejoice with him in his joy as well as to weep with him in his sorrow?  What would you not give never again to feel envy in your heart at your brother, or straitness and pining at his prosperity?  One thing do I desire, said the Psalmist, that mine ear may be nailed to the doorpost of my God:  that I may always be His servant, and may never wander from His service.  Now, that is your desire too.  I am sure it is.  You would not say it of yourself, but I defy you to deny it when it is said about you.  Well, then, such things being found among your desires, what grounds have you for expecting the fulfilment of such desires?  What grounds?  The best of grounds and every ground.  For you have the sure ground of God’s word.  And you have more than His word:  you have His very nature, and the very nature of things.  For shall God create such desires in any man’s heart only to starve and torture that man?  Impossible!  It were blasphemy to suspect it.  No.  Where God has made any man to be so far a partaker of the Divine nature as to change all that man’s deepest desires, and to turn them from vanity to wisdom, from earth to heaven, and from the creature to the Creator, doubt not, wherever He has begun such a work, that He will hasten to finish it.  Yes; lift up your heavy hearts, all ye who desire such things, for God hath sent His Son to say to you, Blessed are ye that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for ye shall be filled.  Only, keep desiring.  Desire every day with a stronger and a more inconsolable desire.  Desire, and ground your desire on God’s word, and then heave your hope like an anchor within the veil whither the Forerunner is for you entered.  May I so hope? you say.  May I venture to hope?  Yes; not only may you hope, but you must hope.  You are commanded to hope.  It is as much your bounden duty to hope always, and to hope for the greatest