he first
place; physical magnitude is subordinate and instrumental. We may safely
accommodate and apply to space the principle which the Scripture
expressly applies to time: One man--as a sphere on which his purposes
may be accomplished and his glory displayed--one man is with the Lord as
a thousand worlds, and a thousand worlds as one man. There is room,
brother, for the whole kingdom of God "within you." In one sense, it is
most true, we ought to abase, but in another we ought to exalt
ourselves. We should reverence ourselves as the most wonderful work of
God within the sphere of our observation. The King, as well as the
kingdom, finds room in a regenerated man. Here the Lord of glory best
loves to dwell.

In this inner and smaller, as well as in the outer and larger sphere,
the kingdom of heaven, following the law of the mustard-plant, grows
from the least to the greatest. All life, indeed, is, in its origin,
invisible; and the new life of faith is not an exception to the rule.
The Lord himself, in the lesson which he taught to Nicodemus, compared
it in this respect to the wind. In its origin it is imperceptible; in
its results it is manifest and great. To wash seven times in Jordan
seemed a small thing to the Syrian soldier, and such it really was; but
when his leprosy was cleansed, and his flesh restored like that of a
little child, he perceived that a great effect had sprung from simple
means. The little-child look unto Jesus which the Gospel prescribes for
the saving of the soul seems to the wisdom of this world as inadequate
to heal a leprosy as the waters of the Jordan seemed to Naaman; yet from
that small seed springs the tree of life, with all its beautiful
blossoms of hope, and all its precious fruits of righteousness.

The first true, deep check in the conscience because of sin; the first
real question, "What must I do to be saved?" the first tender grief for
having crucified Christ and grieved the Spirit; the first request for
pardon and reconciliation made to God, as a child asks bread from his
parents when he is hungry;--the kingdom, coming in any of these forms is
small and scarcely perceptible; but it lives, and in due time will grow
great. Be of good cheer, ye who have felt the word swelling and bursting
like a seed in your hearts. That plant may not yet have attained
maturity in your life, but greater is He who shields it than all who
assail it: the enemy cannot in the end prevail. He who hath begun