we reach it, and the houses fall back,
we see the blue beyond. But we go on, and we are in the shadow again.
And so our earthly lives are passed, to a large extent, beneath the
shade of the grimy buildings that we ourselves have put up, and which
shut out heaven from us, and only now and then a slanting beam comes
through some opening, and carries wistful thoughts and longings into the
Empyrean beyond. And how feeble our faith, and how little of His power
comes into our hearts, and how little of the joy of the Lord is realised
in our daily experience we all know, and it is sometimes good for us to
force ourselves to feel it is but an 'earnest' of the 'inheritance'
that the best of us has.

'God has us.' Has He? Has He my will, which submits itself, and finds
joy in submitting itself, to Him? How many competitors are there for my
love which come in in front of Him, and we 'cannot get at Him for the
press'! How many other motives are dominant in our lives, and how often
we wrench ourselves away from our submission to Him, and try to set up a
little dominion of our own, and say, 'Our lives are ours; who is lord
over us?' Oh, brethren! we have God if we are Christians at all, and God
has us. But alas! surely all honest experience tells us that there are
awful gaps in the circle, and that our possession of Him, and His
possession of us, are wofully incomplete.

Now, let me remind you that this incompleteness is mainly our own fault.
Of course, I know that for the absolute completeness, either of my
possession of God or of His of me, I must pass from out this world, and
enter upon another stage and manner of being. But it is not being in the
flesh, but it is being dominated by the flesh, that is the reason for
the incompleteness of our mutual possession. And it is not being in the
world, but it is being seduced and tyrannised over by the influx of
worldly desires and thoughts, surging into our hearts, that drives God
from out of our hearts, and draws us away from the sweet security of
being possessed by, and living close to, Him. Death does a great deal
for a man in advancing him in the scale of being, and in changing the
centre of gravity, as it were, of this life. But there is no reason to
believe that anything in death, or beyond it, will so alter the set and
direction of his soul as that it will lead him into that possession of
God, and being possessed by Him, which he has not here. There are many
of us who, if we were