that subsists between the Maker and
the work of His hands, is so purely external, and harsh, and
superficial, that God does not reckon it to be a possession at all.

You perhaps remember how, in the great word which underlies all these
New Testament conceptions of God's ownership of His people, viz. the
charter that constituted Israel into a nation, He said, 'Ye shall be
unto Me a people for a possession above all nations, for all the earth
is Mine.' And yet, though that ownership and mastership extended over
everything that His hands had made, He--if I might so say--contemned it,
and relegated it to a secondary position, and told the people that His
heart hungered for something deeper, more real, more vital than such a
possession, and that therefore, just because all the earth was His, and
that was not enough to satisfy His heart, He took them and made them a
peculiar treasure above all nations. We have, then, to think of that
great Divine Love which possesses us when He loves us, and when we love
Him.

But remember that of this sweet commerce and reverberation of love which
constitutes possession, the origination must be in His heart. 'We love
Him because He first loved us.' The mirrors are set all round the great
hall, but their surfaces are cold and lifeless until the great
candelabrum in the centre is lit, and then, from every polished sheet
there flashes back an echoing, answering light, and they repeat and
repeat, until you scarce can tell which is the original and which is
the reflection. But quench the centre-light, and the daughter-radiances
vanish into darkness. The love on either side is on one side spontaneous
and underived, and on the other side is secondary and evoked, but it
_is_ love on both sides. His possession of us is, as it were, the upper
side, and our possession of Him is, as it were, the underside of the one
golden bond. It matters not whether you look at the stream with your
face to its source or with your face to its mouth, the silvery plain is
the same; and the deepest tie that knits men to God is the same as the
tie that knits God to men. There is mutual possession because there is
mutual love.

Then again, in this same thought of mutual possession there lies a
mutual surrender. For to give is the life-breath of all true love, and
there is nothing which the loving heart more desires than to be able to
pour _itself_ out--much rather than any subordinate gifts--on its
object. But that, if i