of the phrase, besides the one in my
text, 'according to the riches of His grace,' are such as these:
'According to the riches of His glory'; 'According to the power that
worketh in us'; 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ';
'According to the energy of the might of His power, which He wrought in
Christ when He raised Him from the dead.'

Now it is clear that all these are varying forms of the same thing. They
vary in form, they are identical in substance. What a Jew calls a
'cubit' an Englishman calls a 'foot,' but the result is pretty nearly
the same. Shillings, marks, francs, are various standards; they all come
to substantially the same result. These varying measures of the divine
gift which is at work in man's salvation, have this in common, that they
all run out into God's immeasurable, unlimited power, boundless wealth.
And so, if we gather them together, and try to focus them in a few
words, they may help to widen our conceptions of what we ought to expect
from God, to bow us in contrition as to the small use that we have made
of it, and to open our desires wide, that they may be filled.

I only aspire, then, to deal with these four forms which I have already
suggested.

I. The measure of our possible attainments is the whole wealth of God.

'According to the riches of His grace.' Another angle at which the same
thought is viewed appears in another part of the letter, where we have
this variation in the expression, 'According to the riches of His
glory.' 'Grace' and 'Glory' are generally opposed antithetically; in
this epistle they are united, for in the verse before my text I read:
'To the praise of the glory of His grace.' So the first thought is, the
whole wealth of God is available for every Christian soul.

Now it seems to me that there are very few things that the popular
Christianity of this day needs more than a furnishing up of the familiar
old Christian terminology, which has largely lost the freshness and the
power that it once had. They tell us that these incandescent burners,
that we are using nowadays, are very much more bright when they are
first fixed than after the mantle gets a little worn. So it is with the
terminology of Christianity. It needs to be re-stated, not in such a way
as to take the pith out of it, which is what a great deal of the modern
craze for re-statement means, but in such a way as to brighten it up
again, and to invest it with something of the 'celestial light