Town and Country Sermons | Page 5

and less to ask, What shall I
eat and drink, wherewithal shall I be clothed?--Or how shall I win for
myself admiration, station, and all the fine things of this world?--What
he thinks of more and more is,--How can I become better and more
righteous? How can I make my neighbours better likewise? How the
world? As for the good things of this life, if they will make me a better
man, let them come. If not, why should I care so much about them?
What I want is, to be righteous like God, beneficent and good-doing
like God.
That is the man of whom it is written, that he shall be satisfied with the
plenteousness of God's house, God's kingdom; for with God is the
fountain of life.
Again, as long as a man has no hunger and thirst after truth, he is easily
enough interested, though he is not satisfied. He reads, perhaps, and
amuses his fancy, but he does no more. He reads again, really to
instruct his mind, and learns about this and that: but he does not learn
the causes of things; the reasons of the chances and changes of this
world; and so he is not satisfied; he takes up doctrines, true ones,
perhaps, at secondhand out of books and out of sermons:, without
having had any personal experience of them; and so, when sickness or
sorrow, doubt or dread, come, they do not satisfy him. Then he
longs--he ought at least to long--for truth. He thirsts for truth. O that I
could know the truth about myself; about my fellow-creatures; about
this world. What am I really? What are they? Where am I? What can I
know? What ought I to do? I do not want secondhand names and
notions. I want to be sure.
That is the divine thirst after truth, which will surely be satisfied. He
will drink of the pleasure of true knowledge, as out of an overflowing
river; and the more he knows, the more he will be glad to know, and
the more he will find he can know, if only he loves truth for truth's own
sake; for, as it is written, in God's light shall that man see light.
With God is the well of life; and in his light we shall see light. The first
is the answer to man's hunger after righteousness, the second answers

to his thirst after truth.
With God is the well of life. There is the answer. Thou wishest to be a
good man; to live a good life; to live as a good son, good husband,
good father, good in all the relations of humanity; as it is written, 'And
Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations; and Noah walked
with God.' Then do thou walk with God. For in him is the life thou
wishest for. He alone can quicken thee, and give thee spirit and power
to fulfil thy duty in thy generation. Is not his Spirit the Lord and Giver
of life--the only fount and eternal spring of life? From him life flows
out unto the smallest blade of grass beneath thy feet, the smallest gnat
which dances in the sun, that it may live the life which God intends for
it. How much more to thee, who hast an altogether boundless power of
life; whom God has made in his own likeness, that thou mayest be
called his son, and live his life, and do, as Christ did, what thou seest
thy heavenly Father do.
Thou feelest, perhaps, how poor and paltry thine own life is, compared
with what it might have been. Thou feelest that thou hast never done
thy best. When the world is praising thee most, thou art most ashamed
of thyself. Thou art ready to cry all day long, 'I have left undone that
which I ought to have done;' till, at times, thou longest that all was over,
and thou wert beginning again in some freer, fuller, nobler, holier life,
to do and to be what thou hast never done nor been here; and criest with
the poet--
'Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant; 'Tis life, not death, for which I
pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.
Then have patience. With God is the fount of life. He will refresh and
strengthen thee; and raise thee up day by day to that new life for which
thou longest. Is not Holy communion his own pledge that he will do so?
Is not that God's own sign to thee, that though thou canst not feed and
strengthen thine own soul, he can and will feed and strengthen it; and
feed it--mystery of mysteries--with himself; that God may dwell in thee,
and thou in God. And if