t is one-sided, is misery, and only when it is
reciprocal, is it blessed. God gives Himself to us, as we know, most
chiefly in that unspeakable gift of His Son, and we possess Him by
virtue of His self-communication which depends upon His love. And then
we possess Him, and He possesses us, not less by the answering surrender
of ourselves, which is the expression of our love. No love subsists if
it is only recipient; no love subsists if it is only communicated.
Exports and imports must both be realised in this sweet commerce, and we
enrich ourselves far more by what we give to the Beloved than by what we
keep for ourselves.

The last, the hardest thing to surrender, is our own wills. To give them
up by constraint is slavery that degrades. To give them up because we
love is a sacrifice which sanctifies, even in the lowest reaches of
daily life. And the love that knits us to God is not invested with all
its blessed possession of Him, until it has surrendered its will, and
said, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' The traveller in the old fable
gathered his cloak around him all the more closely, and held it the more
tightly, because of the tempest that blew, but when the warm sunbeams
fell he dropped it. He that would coerce my will, stiffens it into
rebellion; but when a beloved one says, 'Though I might be much bold to
enjoin thee, yet for love's sake I rather beseech,' then yielding is
blessedness, and the giving ourselves away is the finding of God and
ourselves.

I need not touch, in more than a word, upon another aspect of this
mutual possession, brought into view lovingly in many parts of
Scripture, and that is that there is in it not only mutual love and
mutual surrender, but mutual indwelling, 'He that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Jesus Christ has said the same thing
to us, 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me
bringeth forth much fruit.' We dwell in God, possessing Him; He dwells
in us, possessing us. We dwell in God, being possessed by Him. He dwells
in us, being possessed by us. And He moves in the heart that loves, as
the Master walking through His house, as the divinity is present in the
temple, and as the soul permeates the body, and is sight in the eye and
colour in the cheek, and force in the arm, and deftness in the finger,
and swiftness in the foot. So the indwelling God breathes through all
the capacities, and all the desires, and all the needs of the soul which