To find out and follow every new day His Father's mind and
will, and to finish every night another part of His Father's appointed
work,--that was more than His necessary food to our Lord. The great
schoolmen, as they meditated on these deep matters, had a saying to the
effect that all created things take their true goodness or their true
evil from the end they aim at. And thus it was that our Lord, aiming
only at His Father's ends and never at His own, both manifested and
attained to a Divine goodness, just as the greedy crowds of Galilee and
the disputatious disciples, as long and as far as they made their belly
or their honour their end and aim, to that extent fell short of all true
goodness, all true satisfaction, and all true acceptance.
By-ends was so called because he was full of low, mean, selfish motives,
and of nothing else. All that this wretched creature did, he did with a
single eye to himself. The best things that he did became bad things in
his self-seeking hands. His very religion stank in those men's nostrils
who knew what was in his heart.
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