The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 1 — Section 198

Ill. 'l'm; IIIOHEBT BPinITUAL PRINCIPLE DECLARED-- .-THAT TIIE MF.EKNEBB THAT MINISTERS, '.l'HAT BEBVEB, THAT IB EVEB BEA\IY TO MAKE ITSELF THE LEAST, IN PURSUIT OIi' 'fHE HiaHEBT WELFARE 011' MEN, 18 THl>.T ll'OROE WHICH MOST UNFAILINGLY WINS EVENTUALLY THE OHIEFEST PLACE, THE GREATEST HON(UB AND INFLUENCE, AND MOST ROYAL AND ENDURING EMPIBE. The Beatitude does not fer a moment purport to say any- thing to the honour or the man who might possibly be lord of a million acres, but it does purport these two things at the lowest estimate-to honour the man who through meek obedience, diligence, industry, study, should out of actual poverty win for himself but a single acre; and, secondly, much more to honour the man who by the like qualities makes the earth more tenantable for its citizens, and its citizens longer-Ii ved and happier tenants of it. IV, A GRACIOUS AND UNFALTERING ASSURANCE FOB ALL THOSE WHO ABE MEEK IN THIS BENSE, THAT THEY ABE STUDYING TO GBOW IN BEAL HARMONY WITH THE WILL OF HEAVEN AND ITS LOVE, THAT IT 18 FOB THEM TO FIND AT LAST TREIB LONG PBAYEB DIVINELY AND MOST PRACTICALLY ANSWERED, AND Goo's "KINGDOM COME, AND HIS WILL DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN," There is no sense truer than this in which the meek shall "inherit the eartb."-B. Ver. 6.-The blessedness of those who hunger and thirst after righteO'USness, "Blessed are they which do hunger . • • for they shall be filled." This Beatitude is, among all the others around it, as the spread banquet of religious meditation. It may have the just effect of surprising us, with a very unaccustomed hopefulness as to human nature. It challenges us to believe that there is left surviving still in us a germ and force of spiritual nature that can rise to appreciate that which is the highest of things that are holiest. It postulates the possibility, though it were only a possibility, of our attaining the disposition to feel in genuine, unfeigned sympathy with it, that principle of so lofty height; and so much so as to long with the longing of hunger and thirst to live, actually live, in practical harmony with it, and habitual exemplification of it. Such encouragement is not the illusion of vanity, or of self-sufficient exaltings of what man is or may be; it is the outcome of the knowledge, the gracious condescending love and power of that true Teacher, and the Lifter-up of our souls, who spoke the Beatitude- spoke it in that strange gathering and at that strange time of day. In what he said we may certainly repose the confidence of hope and of firmest faith. Let us ask- I. WHAT 18 THE THING HEBE CALLED RIGHTEOUSNESS? The word may well be a study. It may well and most wisely be intended for a study, How much-a com- pressed volume in a word-must there be condensed in the quality, the disposition, the power, the great reality, be it what it may, which Christ here calls righteousness! It is the thing man failed of at the first, and spoiled fresh-born human nature. It is God's own undeviating rightness; the unfaltering love of that which he unfalteringly loves, and unfailing practice of that which he unfailingly practises. It is, indeed, the supreme ideal, but the most undoubted reality. It soars to highest thought, and to lowliest practice it stoops. It is "exceeding broad," but fine and penetrating as a " two~ edged sword." God's Law, God's will, God's love, the moral projection of the heavenly kingdom on earth, how great, how wise, how generous, how omnipresent, filling all spaces whatsoever like the flowing tide to all the world, it must surely be I The type of moral perfection is that which constitutes the righteousness here spoken of, in which a perfect moral nature rests in satisfied blissful repose, and for which our imper- fect moral condition should make us hunger and thirst. Whether the kaowledge of that type is reached by us direct from the pattern in the heavens, and in the Divine Being himself; or whether we attain it with Divine help through a perpetual exalting of each and every germ and tendency and quality of goodness that our human nature has ever shown, is comparatively immaterial to inquire. We are persuaded of its existence, and we have some knowledge of its proportions, according to the greater advance or the backwardness of our own moral discernments. And though the image be all too broken, the rofl.ection too uncertain and scattered, like that upon the surface of troubled waters, yet there is this strange fact to be noted, that while entirely lost in none all perhaps have a completer notion and scheme of it than they, for the most part, care to own to. Such is its reality, its vitality, and its deep-cut gmving on the heart I IL WHAT ABl!I THE THINGB WHICH I.,IE lllCLUDED IN THE DESCRIPTION OF "HUNGER·  190 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. [oH, v. 1-4b.