The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1903-01-17
THE HUNGRY SOUL.
II Travels the Road of the Blessed
In Christ's Kingdom.
And Has the Comfort of che Promise
That Id Shall BE FIlled-ser-
mon by the "Highway and
Bywayo Preacher.


Text: Blessed are they which do hun
ger and thirst after Righteousness, for they
shall be filled" Matt. Sc.
The hungry soul is one of the char
acters met with in the Kingdom OF
Jesus Christ. And because it is a hun
cry soul it is plainly and self-evident-
ly live soul, healthy soul and a
growing soul. A dead body never
yet hungered and thirsted, and dead
soul is as insensible to desire for the
righteousness of God as is the dead
body to the tempting viands placed
Mt its side. Jesus declares: BLESSED
are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness, for they shall be
filed" For thirty years the Son of God
had walked the pathway of the
blessed. In Him was found the per-
feet expression of David's outpoured
heart: "Oh, how love 1 Thy law
(righteousness), it is my meditation
all the day." In the humble home at
Nazareth during his boyhood as He
learned at His parents knees; in the
first journey to Jerusalem at the age
of twelve, when He sought out the
rabbis in the temple and questioned
them eagerly out of the law and the
prophets; during the long years OF
waiting in the rude carpenter shop
at Nazareth, while He wrought with
His hands for His daily bread, oh,
how His soul hungered and thirstcd
for the righteousness of God! He
learned to know that blessed indeed
was he who hungered and thirsted
for righteousness, and the fullness OF
God was His portion as day by day
His soul sat at His Fathers table
and ate and drank of the spiritual
bounties so lavishly set before Him.
And then in the fullness of Gods
time He came to set up His King
dom, and in the Sermon on the Mount
we have, not the Magma Charta of
the human race, as it has been false
ly called, but the recasting of the in
flexible law of Gods righteousness as
the declaration of principles of the
Kingdom of Jesus Christ. The Mag
ma Charta of the human race rang
forth in Christ's words from the
cross: "It is finished" as He, the
Righteous One, bore the sins of the
world, and wrought for mankind a
mighty deliverance from sin and
death, but in the Sermon on the
Mount we have the perfect righteous
ness of God made manifest in new
form, and perfectly lived out in the
life of Jesus. Jesus was a pracu-
cal theologian, and step by step dur
ing the actual experiences of every
day life He had come to know that
the poor in spirit, the mourner, the
meek, the hungry soul, the merciful.
the pure-hearted, the peacemaker,
were all blessed. and that every prom
Use given to them by God was as
certain of fulfillment as His coming
had been the fulfillment of prophecy.
The clear understanding of this
shuts every door of human POSSIBLE
ity of realizing the lofty heights Of
this towering mountain of Gods
righteousness; but, blessed be God!
it opens the "Via Christi" along
which the soul may walk and real
ize all the righteousness and fullness
of Christ Jesus. Man may not look
through the natural lenses of the
human heart upon the rare and
priceless gems studding this Sermon
on the Mount and appropriate them
to his use. God must fit glasses TO
the eyes of his soul before he can
see clearly the beauty of these jew
els and understand their true setting.
Belshazzar, king of Babylon, appro-
priated the holy vessels taken from
the temple at Jerusalem to his own
use, and the finger of God traced His
indelible judgment upon the walls of
his palace and the prophet Daniel
read: "Thou art weighed in the bal
ances and found wanting" And ii is
ever thus. If the natural man ap.
propriates the holy things of God, he
does so to his own destruction. As
Peter puts it: "They that are I'M
learned and unstable wrest the
Scriptures unto their own de-
struction." And every verse, and
every line, and every word, in the
Sermon on the Mount bears its over
whelming indictment of the natural
man: "Thou art weighed in the bal
ances and found wanting" But the
soul which has been quickened into
life by the touch of Him Who has
scaled its every glistening height and
has measured it's length and breadth
of possibilities may follow over the
pathway marked out by Jesus pa
tient, bleeding feet, and rejoice that he
can sit in the School of Heaven and
learn the Divine secrets of the King
dom of God.
And so our text is mot for the
dead soul of the natural man, but
is a message to the quickened soul
of the regenerate man, and blessed
is he when he hungers and thirsts
after righteousness, for he shall be
filled.
There are just two kinds of souls,
dead souls and live souls; the soul
that hungers and the soul that does
not. The young and democratic son
of President Roosevelt was return
ing home from the public school at
one day when he. was
stopped in his play with the other
boys by gentleman who asked I'm
establishment II he. the presidents
son, was allowed to play with such