alls on it. A
diamond flashes many colours as its facets catch the light. So, in this
context, the Apostle seems to be haunted with that thought of
'inheriting' and 'inheritance,' and he recurs to it several times, but
sets it at different angles, and it flashes back different beauties of
radiance. For the words, which I have wrenched from their context in the
first of these two verses, are more accurately rendered, as in the
Revised Version, in 'whom also we were made,' _not_ 'have
obtained'--'an inheritance.' Whose inheritance? God's! The Christian
community is God's possession. Then, in my second text, we have the
converse thought--'the earnest of _our_ inheritance.' What is the
Christian's possession? The same God whose possession is the Christian.
So, then, there is a deep and a wonderful relation between the believing
soul and God, and however different must be the two sides of that
relation, the resemblance is greater than the difference. Surely that is
the deepest, most blessed, and most strength-giving conception of the
Christian life. Other notions of it lay stress, and that rightly, upon
certain correspondence between us and God. My faith corresponds to His
faithfulness and veracity. My obedience corresponds to His authority. My
weakness lays hold on His strength. My emptiness is replenished by His
fulness. But here we rise above the region of correspondences into that
of similarity. In these other aspects the convexity fits the concavity;
in this aspect the two hemispheres go together and make the complete
globe. We possess God, and God possesses us, and it is the same set of
facts which are set forth in the two thoughts, 'We were made an
inheritance, ... the earnest of our inheritance.'

I. Now, then, let me ask you to look first at this mutual possession.

We possess God; God possesses us. What does that mean? Well, it means
plainly and chiefly this, a mutual love. For we all know--and many of us
thankfully can bear witness to the truth of it in our earthly
relationships,--that the one way by which a human spirit can possess a
spirit is by the sweet mutual love which abolishes 'mine' and 'thine,'
and all but abolishes 'me' and 'thee.' And so God sets little store by
the ownership which depends on divinity and creation, though, of
course, that relation brings with it a duty. As the old psalm has it,
'It is He that hath made us, and we are His'; still, such a relationship
as this, based upon the connection