Conscience wants pacifying, cleansing, enlightening, directing, and we
get all these in the good news of One that has died for us, and that
lives to be our Lord. The will needs authority which is not force. And
where is there an authority so constraining in its sweetness and so
sweet in its constraint as in those silken bonds which are stronger than
iron fetters? Hope, imagination, and all other of our powers or
weaknesses, our gifts or needs, are satisfied when they feed on Christ.
If we feed upon anything else it turns to ashes that break our teeth and
make our palates gritty, and have no nourishment in them. We shall be
'for ever roaming with a hungry heart' unless we take our places at the
feast on the one sacrifice for the world's peace.

III. I can say but a word as to the guests.

It is 'the meek' who eat. The word translated 'meek' has a wider and
deeper meaning than that. 'Meek' refers, in our common language, mainly
to men's demeanour to one another; but the expression here goes deeper.
It means both 'afflicted' and 'lowly'--the right use of affliction being
to bow men, and they that bow themselves are those who are fit to come
to Christ's feast. There is a very remarkable contrast between the words
of my text and those that follow a verse or two afterwards. 'The meek
shall eat and be satisfied,' says the text. And then close upon its
heels comes, 'All those that be fat upon earth shall eat.' That is to
say, the lofty and proud have to come down to the level of the lowly,
and take indiscriminate places at the table with the poor and the
starving, which, being turned into plain English is just this--the one
thing that hinders a man from partaking of the fulness of Christ's
feeding grace is self-sufficiency, and the absence of a sense of need.
They that 'hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled'; and