and
capable of being, dominant, supreme, but was hampered and hindered here,
shall reach its full development, and where the plant that was dwarfed
in this alien soil, transplanted into that higher house, shall blossom
and bear immortal fruits. The new moon has a ragged edge, and each of
the protrusions and concavities are the prophecy of the perfect orb
which shall ere long fill the night with calm light from its silvery
shield. The incompleteness prophesies completion.

And if the incompleteness is so blessed, what will the completeness be?
A shilling to a million pounds, Knowledge which is partial and
intermittent, like the twilight, as contrasted with the blaze of
noonday, Joy like winter sunshine as compared with the warmth and heat
of the midday sun at the zenith on the Equator. The 'earnest' of the
'inheritance' is wealth; the inheritance itself shall be unaccountable
treasure.

III. And so, lastly, a word about the completion of the possession.

The 'earnest' is always of the same nature as, and a part of the
'inheritance.' Therefore, since the Holy Spirit is the earnest, the
conclusion is plain, that the inheritance is nothing less than God
Himself. Heaven is to possess God, and to be possessed by Him. That is
the highest conception that we can form of that future life. And it is
sorely to be lamented that subsidiary conceptions, which are all useful
in their subordinate places, have, by popular Christianity, been far too
much elevated into being the central blessedness of that future heaven.
It is all right that we should cast the things which it is 'impossible
for men to utter' into the shape of symbols which may a little relieve
the necessary inarticulateness; but golden streets, and crystal
pavements, and white robes, and golden palms, and all such
representations, are but the dimmest shadows of that which they intend
to express, and do often, as is the vice of all symbols, obscure. We can
only conceive of a condition of which we have had no experience, by the
two ways of symbolism and of negation. We can say, 'There shall be no
night there; there shall be no curse there; they need no candle, neither
light of the sun; they rest not day nor night; there shall be no more
death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,
for the former things are passed away.' But all these negations, like
their sister symbols, are but surface work, and we have to go deeper
than all of them.

But to