I think we shall all recognize that the tendency of men and women is, for the most part, too different from this. They may wish to do right and to avoid wrong, but it is comparatively rare for the supreme passion of their lives to be the pursuit of righteousness, and for the supreme love of their lives to be for the law of God. Is it not our general tendency to pursue our own objects, to seek enjoyment, and happiness, and success in our own ways, and to regard the law of God, and the principles of righteousness, as a controlling power, an external authority, which checks us when we are in danger of going wrong and so far guides us? but the love of it, and the longing for obedience to it, is too rarely the main motive of our lives. That is the characteristic of those whom we regard as Saints, but it is not, I fear, the characteristic of the mass of men and women. This, however, is the ideal put before us, throughout the Scriptures, as that which ought to be predominant in our hearts and lives. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” says Moses, “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” “This,” said our Lord, “is the great commandment.” “Blessed,” according to this Psalm, “is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” It is not enough for such a man not to do wrong; his whole soul is absorbed in the passion for doing what is right. He believes that the law of God has set before him a great ideal, a vision of the perfection of human nature; and his great craving is to realize that ideal and to be what God intended him to be. He knows that all blessing is to be found in that law and in those visions of perfection, and he pursues them with his whole heart.