the Giver. He speaks of it as
'in the saints,' meaning that, just as the land of Canaan was
distributed amongst tribes and families, and each man got his own little
plot, so that broad land is parted out amongst those who are 'partakers
of the inheritance of the saints in light.'

And so my text suggests to me three points to which I seek to call your
attention. First, the inheritance; second, the heirs; and third, the
heirs' present knowledge of their future possession.

I. First, then, note the inheritance.

Now we must discharge from the word some of its ordinary associations.
There is no reference to the thought of succession in it, as the mere
English reader is accustomed to think--to whom inheritance means
possession by the death of another. The idea is simply that of
possession. The figure which underlies the word is, of course, that of
the ancient partition of the land of Canaan amongst the tribes, but we
must go a great deal deeper than that in order to understand its whole
sweep and fulness of meaning.

What is the portion for a soul? God. God is Heaven, and Heaven is God.
No interpretation of 'the inheritance,' however it may run into cheap
and vulgar sensuous descriptions of a future glory, has come within
sight of the meaning of the word, unless it has grasped this as the
central thought: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon
earth that I desire beside Thee.' Only God can be the portion of a human
spirit. And none else can fill the narrowest and the smallest of man's
needs.

So, then, if there were realised all the accumulated changes of progress
in blessedness, and the withdrawal of all external causes of disquiet
and weariness and weeping, still the heart would hunger and be empty of
its true possession unless God Himself had flowed into it. It were but a
poor advancement and the gain of a loss, if yearnings were made
immortal, and the aching vacuity, which haunts every soul that is parted
from God, were cursed with immortality. It would be so, if it be not
true that the inheritance is nothing less than the fuller possession of
God Himself.

And how do men possess God? How do we possess one another, here and now?
By precisely the same way, only indefinitely expanded and exalted, do we
possess Him here, and shall we possess Him hereafter. Heart to heart is
joined by love which is mutual and interpenetrating possession; where
'mine' and 'thine' become blended, like the several port