en partially true--admitting all that you may
say about circumstances which go to make some portion of the
blessedness of that future life--if it be true that God is the true
blessing given by His Gospel upon earth, that He Himself is the
greatest gift that can be bestowed, and that He is the true Heaven of
heaven--what a flood of light does it cast upon that statement of my
text, 'If children, then heirs'; no inheritance without sonship! For
who can possess God but they who love Him? who can love, but they who
know His love? who can have Him working in their hearts a blessed and
sanctifying change, except the souls that lie thankfully quiet
beneath the forming touch of His invisible hand, and like flowers
drink in the light of His face in their still joy? How can God dwell
in any heart except a heart which has in it a love of purity? Where
can He make His temple except in the 'upright heart and pure'? How
can there be fellowship betwixt Him and any one except the man who is
a son because he hath received of the divine nature, and in whom that
divine nature is growing up into a divine likeness? 'What fellowship
hath Christ with Belial?' is not only applicable as a guide for our
practical life, but points to the principle on which God's
inheritance belongs to God's sons alone. 'Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God'; and those only who love, and are
children, to them alone does the Father come and does the Father
belong.

So much, then, for the first principle: No inheritance without
sonship.

II. Secondly, the text leads us to the principle that there is no
sonship without a spiritual birth.

The Apostle John in that most wonderful preface to his Gospel, where
all deepest truths concerning the Eternal Being in itself and in the
solemn march of His progressive revelations to the world are set
forth in language simple like the words of a child and inexhaustible
like the voice of a god, draws a broad distinction between the
relation to the manifestations of God which every human soul by
virtue of his humanity sustains, and that into which some, by virtue
of their faith, enter. Every man is lighted by the true light because
he is a man. They who believe in His name receive from Him the
prerogative to become the sons of God. Whatever else may be taught in
John's words, surely they do teach us this, that the sonship of which
he speaks does not belong to man as man, is not a relation into which
we are born