heavenly things, the more frequently and fervently shall we feel the desire of possessing them.
But you will ask me, how can this accord with what our Saviour says to the Samaritan, "He that shall drink of the water I shall give him shall never thirst"? (John, iv. 13.) Here the Son of God says that we shall never thirst, if we drink of the water he shall give ; and the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of the Wise Man, says, " That the more we drink, the more we shall thirst." How shall we reconcile one with the other such different assertions? The holy Fathers reply, that by the words of Jesus Christ to the Samaritan, we are to understand, that whoever drinks of the living water therein described, " shall never thirst after sensual pleasures;" because the sweetness of spiritual things will give him an absolute disrelish for things of the world, and will render them quite insipid. As when you have tasted honey, says St. Gregory,- everything else will seem sour and bitter; in like manner, when we have tasted God and spiritual things, all that savours of any affinity to and contagion of flesh and blood will become insipid and excite a loathing. But as to the words of the Wise Man, a Those who eat me shall yet hunger, and those who drink me shall yet thirst" (Ecclus. xxiv. 29), we must consider them to relate to spiritual things, and we must understand, that the more we taste them, the more we shall feel our hunger and thirst for them to increase. For being then come to a better knowledge of their worth, and having experienced their sweetness, we shall, in consequence, be impelled to be more zealous in seeking after them. It is thus the holy doctors reconcile these two passages.
But then, how can this accord with what our Saviour says again in the gospel, " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice; because they shall be filled"? (Matt. v. 6.) Here he says that he will fill those who shall hunger and thirst after justice; and there the Wise Man assures us, that such as shall eat and drink of wisdom, shall always find the same hunger and thirst as before. Now, how is it possible that things so opposite can exist together? how is it possible to reconcile assertions so different? It is very easy to do it. It is the privilege and the excellence of spiritual things to satisfy, and at the same time, to excite our appetite; to quench, and still to excite our thirst; and in a word, to cause, that the more we eat and drink of them, the more we hunger and thirst after them. But then it is a hunger, which, instead of making us faint and weak, renders us
