ing to his birth, quality, and profession, longs very much for some civil, military, or ecclesiastical preferment. Scarce, however, does he obtain the object of his desire, when he begins to contemn it, and to fix his eyes on something else, which, when obtained, he is, in like manner, as soon weary of: in short, unable to regulate his ambition or to set bounds to his desires, he still gapes after something new, and never rests satisfied with what he has. But it is not so in spiritual things. For when we have them not, we feel for them disrelish and aversion; but when once we possess them, it is then we begin to know their value; it is then we set still higher value on them, and the more we taste them, the more earnestly we seek after them. The reason of this difference, says this great saint, is, that the enjoyment of temporal goods unfolds to us their vanity and emptiness; so that not finding in them the satisfaction we hoped for, we contemn what we possess; and expecting to find in something else the content we seek after, we suffer ourselves to be carried away by new desires. But still we deceive ourselves— these new desires will meet the same fate as the others. For, as we are not made for this world, there is in it nothing, which can fully satiate our appetite. This is what our Saviour taught the Samaritan woman, when he told her, " Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again" (John, iv. 13); because all the pleasures of this life cannot quench the thirst of man, who is created for heaven. But as to spiritual goods and pleasures, we never love or desire them so much, as when we possess them; because then we best know their value, and the more perfectly we possess them, the greater is our desire and thirst after them. The same St. Gregory says, it is not to be wondered, that we do not desire spiritual things, when so far from having experienced how sweet they are, we have not even begun to taste them: "For how can any one love that he is ignorant of?" (Hom. 16.) The Apostle St. Peter also says, "If nevertheless you have tasted how sweet the Lord is" (1 Pet ii. 3) ; and the Royal Prophet, " Taste and see how sweet the Lord is." (Ps. xxxiii. 9.) Because when once we begin to taste the Lord, and to relish spiritual things, we shall experience such sweetness in them, as to render our desires of them insatiable. By these words, then, "those who eat me shall yet hunger, and those who drink me shall yet thirst," we must understand, that the more assiduously we apply ourselves to
