But a connection may also be traced with the preceding paragraph.  There our desires were treated as securing God’s corresponding gifts.  Here our desires, when turned to men, are regarded, not as securing their corresponding conduct, but as obliging us to action.  By taking our wishes as the rule of our dealings with others, we shall be like God, who in regard to His best gifts takes our wishes as the rule of His dealings with us.  Our desires sent heavenward procure blessings for us; sent earthward, they prescribe our blessing of others.  That is a startling turn to give to our claims on our fellows.  It rests on the principle that every man has equal rights, therefore we ought not to look for anything from others which we are not prepared to extend to others.  A. should give B. whatever A. thinks B. should give him.  Our error is in making ourselves our own centre, and thinking more of our claims on others than of our obligations to them.  Christ teaches us that these are one.  Such a principle applied to our lives would wonderfully pull down our expectations and lift up our obligations.  It is really but another way of putting the law of loving our neighbours as ourselves.  If observed, it would revolutionise society.  Nothing short of it is the law of the kingdom, and the duty of all who call themselves Christ’s subjects.

This is the inmost meaning, says Jesus, of the law and the prophets.  All former revelations of the divine will in regard to men’s relations to men are summed in this.  Of course, this does not mean, as some people would like to make it mean, that morality is to take the place of religion, but simply that all the precepts touching conduct to men are gathered up, for the subjects of the kingdom, in this one.  ’Love worketh no ill to his neighbour:  therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.’

OUR KNOCKING

     ’Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
     and it shall be opened unto you.’—­MATT, vii. 7.

In the letter to the church at Laodicea, we read, ’Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’  The image is there employed to set forth the tenderness and patience of the exalted Christ, who condescends to sue for entrance into every human heart, and comes in with His hands full of blessing.  Now, it is very striking, I think, that the same symbol is employed in this text in reference to our duty.  There is such a thing as our knocking at some door for entrance and blessing.  What is that knocking?

The answer which is popularly given, I suppose, is that all these three injunctions in our text, ‘Ask—­seek—­knock,’ are but diverse aspects of the one exhortation to prayerfulness.  And that may, perhaps, exhaust their meaning; but I am rather disposed to think that it is possible to trace a difference and a climax in them. To ask is obviously to apply to a person who can give, and that is prayer. To seek