m, God's power stands
back from saving him, upon any other condition than this that his
soul shall be adapted and prepared for the reception and enjoyment of
the blessing of a spiritual salvation.

But the inheritance which my text speaks about is also that which a
Christian hopes to receive and enter upon in heaven. The same
principle precisely applies there. There is no inheritance of heaven
without sonship; because all the blessings of that future life are of
a spiritual character. The joy and the rapture and the glory of that
higher and better life have, of course, connected with them certain
changes of bodily form, certain changes of local dwelling, certain
changes which could perhaps be granted equally to a man, of whatever
sort he was. But, friends, it is not the golden harps, not the
pavement of 'glass mingled with fire,' not the cessation from work,
not the still composure, and changeless indwelling, not the society
even, that makes the heaven of heaven. All these are but the
embodiments and rendering visible of the inward facts, a soul at
peace with God in the depths of its being, an eye which gazes upon
the Father, and a heart which wraps itself in His arms. Heaven is no
heaven except in so far as it is the possession of God. That saying
of the Psalmist is not an exaggeration, nor even a forgetting of the
other elements of future blessedness, but it is a simple statement of
the literal fact of the case, 'I have none in heaven but Thee!' God
is the heritage of His people. To dwell in His love, and to be filled
with His light, and to walk for ever in the glory of His
sunlit face, to do His will, and to bear His character stamped upon
our foreheads--_that_ is the glory and the perfectness to which
we are aspiring. Do not then rest in the symbols that show us, darkly
and far off, what that future glory is. Do not forget that the
picture is a shadow. Get beneath all these figurative expressions,
and feel that whilst it may be true that for us in our present
earthly state, there can be no higher, no purer, no more spiritual
nor any truer representations of the blessedness which is to come,
than those which couch it in the forms of earthly experience, and
appeal to sense as the minister of delight--yet that all these things
are representations, and not adequate presentations. The inheritance
of the servants of the Lord is the Lord Himself, and they dwell in
Him, and _there_ is their joy.

Well then, if that be ev