X THE BLESSED HUNGRY "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."-ST. MATT. v. 6. M ANY seem to think the Sermon on the Mount lacks unity. They say, also, that the Beatitudes are without organic relation, that they are so many verbal gems strung together, devoid of order or kinship. As a matter of fact, these are false statements resulting from inaccurate thinking. Christian students are profoundly impressed by the vital connections throughout the Sermon. According to Professor Carr, the words of this New Sinai fall into three great divisions. First, the Subjects of the Kingdom-their character, privileges, and responsibility; second, the Kingdom in relation to the Law and to Pharisaic rules; third, the Characteristics of the Kingdom -the judgment of others, the Father's love for the Children of the Kingdom, the narrow entrance therein, the danger of false guides to the narrow entrance, and the test of the true, a description of the true subjects of the Kingdom, as distinguished from the false. The Beatitudes naturally come under the division of the Subjects of the Kingdom. And these, too, follow each other in perfect order. Spiritual poverty is the first; sadness for sin is the second; meekness— submission to the will of God-is the third; soulhunger for righteousness is the fourth; these are followed by the three virtues of the Christian life, rising, in an ascending scale-mercy, purity, peace-making. Our study for this morning is based upon the Fourth-the benediction which our Lord pronounces upon the Blessed Hungry. I "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst." This is the law of all living things. Indeed, hunger may be defined as the condition of life. A thousand invisible mouths are wrought into the body of a tree. Limbs and roots forage in the surrounding earth and atmosphere to satisfy the tree's hunger-bitten nature. That lithe, majestic wind-harp of hill and meadow owes its litheness, majesty, and greenness to the burning hungers and thirsts that rage in every atom of its being. The tiny animal, also, thrust into a new environment with eyes fast shut-how long will it remain upon the earth? Consult its appetite, not the calendar; appetite will tell you the story of its growth and maturity. The good health of every animal is absolutely dependent upon a good appetite. Other laws of the pack may be modified in various ways; the law of hunger changes not. Coming up higher still into the realm of living things, we see the baby human. When God wished to manifest, in the fields of time and space, the most won derful thing in eternity, the thought of a human baby flashed into His mind. "I will take a spark of My own being," said the Lord God, "a spark of My very Self, enswathe it in garments of flesh, endow it with creative powers, trouble it with the ache of deathlessness, and send it forth into the wilds of time and sense." A thrill must have stirred the higher intelligences when the idea of a human baby, a mystic cargo of immortality set afloat upon the Nile of destiny, was conceived by God! But how long will this creature of dust and deity remain under a roof of skull and bone? Long enough to grow a good appetite-no longer. Blessed is the tree, the animal, the human that knows the pang of physical hunger and thirst! It is a token of health. Think, moreover, of the intellectual phase of the law of hunger. Mental hunger is the preventive of mental decay. If the mind feeds upon nothing, it is bound to become like that which it assimilates; and for mind to descend lower and lower to the point of invisibility, is to sentence mind to a career for which it was never designed. What bleaker tragedy than that of the closed mind? God has placed us in a world in which there is some new fact or truth to make an intellectual feast for each day. And yet I have heard men boastfully say: "I haven't changed my opinion in twenty-five years!" Such an expression is easily explained. It simply means that they haven't had an opinion worth changing in twenty-five years! People of real opinions, or, better still, of vital convictions, are always changing them-changing them into something deeper, truer, finer, more Christlike. That is a sign of wholesome intellectual growth, which is, of course, an essential part of integral moral and spiritual symmetry. Meeting a friend in Fulton street, I noticed that he had bulging pockets. There was no tangible reason for thinking that he carried much silver or gold, and less still for concluding that he was unduly loaded with concealed deadly weapons. Goaded by curiosity, I began an investigation. What do you think I found? In one pocket there was a work on philosophy, in another a volume on natural science, in a third a book of poems, and in a fourth a copy of the New Testament and Psalms. "I invariably find them good traveling companions," he explained. "In the trolley cars, subways, and other places I manage to come at them. They are soothing and stimulating." Somehow this modern man, building his sanctuary right in the center of the city's roar and strife, recalls that "Country Laborer," of whom Faber has sung: "He walked with painful stoop As if life had made him droop, And care had fastened fetters round his feet; Except what met his eye, Reflected from the rainpools in the street." But, for all that, was he only a vagabond wandering between two worlds? Nay, verily! For "Always his downcast eye Was laughing silently, As if he found some jubilee in thinking; For his one thought was God, In that one thought he abode, For ever in that thought more deeply sinking." I have another friend who read the complete works of Shakespeare one winter, while journeying on the trolley cars between his Brooklyn home and his New York office. Ah, blessed indeed is the hungry and thirsty mind! It invades the beckoning kingdoms of intellect and finds strong and delicious meat in all. Why should we be overmuch satisfied with buffoons and penny-a-liners, when the imperial thinkers are striving to attract our attention, earnestly inviting us to journey with them through the green pastures of immortal mind? If we are content with the intellectually second best, the ordinary, or the vulgar, the reason is self-evident: Our sense of mental hunger has been blunted or perverted. II Next to the general law of hunger, the Master places a definite craving for the highest. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness." This, then, is the path by which the soul attains its coronation. "But," says a man, “I have no appetite for any such thing; so the Master's words do not include me." It is alas! too true. They do not include him in the |