divine seal is the earnest, inasmuch as itself is
part of the whole. The truest and the loftiest conception that we can
form of heaven is as being the perfecting of the religious experience
of earth. The shilling or two, given to the servant in old-fashioned
days, when he was hired, is of the same currency as the balance that
he is to get when the year's work is done. The small payment to-day
comes out of the same purse, and is coined out of the same specie,
and is part of the same currency of the same kingdom, as what we get
when we go yonder and count the endless riches to which we have
fallen heirs at last. You have but to take the faith, the love, the
obedience, the communion of the highest moments of the Christian life
on earth, and free them from all their limitations, subtract from
them all their imperfections, multiply them to their superlative
possibility, and endow them with a continual power of growth, and
stretch them out to absolute eternity, and you get heaven. The
earnest is of a piece with the inheritance.

So, dear brethren, here is a gift offered for us all, a gift which
our feebleness sorely needs, a gift for every timid nature, for every
weak will, for every man, woman, and child beset with snares and
fighting with heavy tasks, the offer of a reinforcement as real and
as sure to bring victory as when, on that day when the fate of Europe
was determined, after long hours of conflict, the Prussian bugles
blew, and the English commander knew that (with the fresh troops that
came on the field) victory was made certain. So you and I may have in
our hearts the Spirit of God, the spirit of strength, the spirit of
love and of a sound mind, the spirit of adoption, the spirit of
wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, to enlighten our
darkness, to bind our hearts to Him, to quicken and energise our
souls, to make the weakest among us strong, and the strong as an
angel of God. And the condition on which we may get it is this simple
one which the Apostle lays down; '_After that ye believed_, ye were
sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our
inheritance.' The Christ, who is the Lord and Giver of the Spirit,
has shown us how its blessed influences may be ours when, on the
great day of the feast, He stood and cried with a voice that echoes
across the centuries, and is meant for each of us, 'If any man
thirsts, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, out
of his b