ote treasure that lies beyond human grasp and outside of
human experience. Do not we believe that, to use the words of this
Apostle in another letter, 'it pleased the Father that in Him should all
the fulness dwell'? Do we not believe that, to use the words of the same
epistle, 'In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily'? Is
not that abundance of the resources of the whole Deity insphered and
incarnated in Jesus Christ our Lord, that it may be near us, and that we
may put out our hand and touch it? This may be a paradox for the
understanding, full of metaphysical puzzles and cobwebs, but for the
heart that knows Christ, most true and precious. God is gathered into
Jesus Christ, and all the fulness of God, whatever that may mean, is
embodied in the Man Christ Jesus, that from Him it may be communicated
to every soul that will.

For, to quote other words of another of the New Testament teachers, 'Of
His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace,' and to quote
words in another part of the same epistle, we may 'all come to a perfect
man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' High
above us, then, and inaccessible though that awful thought, 'the fulness
of God,' may seem, as the zenith of the unscaleable heavens seems to us
poor creatures creeping here upon the flat earth, it comes near, near,
near, ever nearer, and at last tabernacles among us, when we think that
in Him all the fulness dwells, and it comes nearer yet and enters into
our hearts when we think that 'of His fulness have we all received.'

Then, still further, observe another of the words in this
petition:--'That ye may be filled.' That is to say, Paul's prayer and
God's purpose and desire concerning us is, that our whole being may be
so saturated and charged with an indwelling divinity as that there shall
be no room in our present stature and capacity for more, and no sense of
want or aching emptiness.

Ah, brethren! when we think of how eagerly we have drunk at the stinking
puddles of earth, and how after every draught there has yet been left a
thirst that was pain, it is something for us to hear Him say:--'The
water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up
into everlasting life,'--and 'he that drinketh of this water shall never
thirst.' Our empty hearts, with their experiences of the insufficiency
and the vanity of all earthly satisfaction, stand there like the
water-pots at the rustic marri