pression of
monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was
'the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever.' We must rise
above everything that merely applies to changes in our own natures and
in our relations to the external universe, and to other orders of
creatures; and grasp, as the hidden sweetness that lies in the calyx of
the gorgeous flower, the possession of God Himself as the rapture of
our joy and the heaven of our heaven.

And if that be so, then these accumulated words with which the Apostle,
in his fiery, impetuous way, tries to set forth the greatness of what he
is speaking about, receive a loftier meaning than they otherwise would
have.

'The riches of the glory of His inheritance'--now that word 'riches,' or
'wealth,' is a favourite of Paul's; and in this single letter occurs, if
I count rightly, five times. In addition to our text, it is used twice
in connection with God's grace, 'the riches of His grace' once in
connection with Jesus, 'the unsearchable riches of Christ'; and once in
a similar connection to, though with a different application from, our
text, 'the riches of His glory.' Always, you see, it is applied to
something that is special and properly divine. And here, therefore, it
applies, not to the abundance of any creatural good, however exuberant
and inexhaustible the store of it may be, but simply and solely to that
unwearying energy, that self-feeding and ever-burning and never-decaying
light, which is God. Of Him alone it can be said that work does not
exhaust, nor Being tend to its own extinction, nor expenditure of
resources to their diminution. The guarantee for eternal blessedness is
the 'riches' of the eternal God, and so we may be sure that no time can
exhaust, nor any expenditure empty, either His storehouse or our wealth.

And again, the 'glory' is not the lustrous light, however dazzling to
our feeble eyes that may be, of any creature that reflects the light of
God, but it is the far-flashing and never-dying radiance of His own
manifestation of Himself to the hearts and souls of them that love Him.
And so the 'inheritance is incorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not
away'; not merely by reason of the communicated will of God operating
upon creatures whom He preserves untarnished by corruption, and ungnawed
by decay, but because He Himself is the 'inheritance,' and on Him time
hath no power. On His wealth all His creatures may hang for ever; an