+II. A model for preachers.+ Guided by a Divine interpreter, the prophet does not speak of happiness, but of purity and righteousness; he names these as the great favours which God was about to bestow upon His people. So should preachers to-day strive to make men understand that _these_ are the greatest blessings which God can confer upon man. All other blessings spring from them; as all social blessings are secured to a community when its "judges" are righteous and its "counsellors" fear God. Let preachers do their utmost to make it plain to the man of this generation, that just as if we have the sun we shall have light and heat, so if they have purity, they shall have peace; if they attain to holiness, they shall attain to a nobler and completer happiness than those who long for happiness merely ever dream. +III. An ennobling ideal to be striven after by all men.+ Happy is the man who has a great purpose in life. And what is the purpose with which a study of our text should inspire us? Not merely to "flee from the wrath to come," but to become "partakers of the Divine nature," and so to attain to God's ideal of humanity. God is striving to restore us to His own likeness: let us do all that in us lies to help on this restoration (Phil. ii. 12, 13). The "salvation" we are to "work out" is not salvation from guilt (_that_ is Christ's work, accomplished by Him once for all on the cross), but from the indwelling corruption which is to us what dross is to the precious metals. Nor are we merely to seek to put away that which is evil;[1] we are to strive to set up in us all noblenesses which are to character what "judges" and "counsellors" are to a city (2 Pet. i. 5-7; Phil. iv. 8). Blessed is the man who has this ideal in life. 1. _He is saved from fear,_ the haunting dread of failure which oppresses those whose supreme desire is merely to be saved from hell. 2. _He has a sustaining hope,_ based upon the sure promises of God's Word (1 Pet. i. 10, 11). 3. He has a present and growing joy,_ such as can come only from self-conquest and moral progress. The joy of "the just," that is of the men whose steadfast aim is righteousness, is like "the path of the just" (Prov. iv. 18). FOOTNOTES: