270 A GOODLY HERITAGE
them in the measure in which we understand them, and sympathize with them, and love them. Knowledge, intercourse, sympathy, affection — these are the ways by which men can possess men, and spirits, spirits. A man who gets the thoughts of a great teacher into his mind, and has his whole being saturated by them, may be said to have made the teacher his own. A friend or a lover owns the heart that he or she loves, and which loves back again; and not otherwise do we possess God. We have God for ours first in the measure in which our minds are actively occupied with thoughts of Him. We have no merely mystical or emotional possession of God to preach. There is a real, adequate knowledge of Him in Jesus Christ. We know God, His character, His heart. His relations to us, His thoughts of good concerning us, sufficiently for all intellectual and for all practical purposes.
*[[ There is no other way by which a spirit can possess a spirit, that is not cognizable by sense, except only by the way of thinking about Him, to begin with. All else follows that. That is how you hold your dear ones when they go to the other side of the world. When your husband, or your wife, or your child goes away from home for a week, you do not forget them. Do you have them in any sense if they never dwell in the " study of your imagination," and never fill your thoughts with sweetness and with light ? ^
^ The love of Christ which burns in one Christian's breast does not become enfeebled if other hearts catch the flame from his, but rather, by contact of congenial elements, glows in each separate heart with a fervour all the more intense. The peace of God may be diffiised through the spirits of a multitude which no man can number, and yet each redeemed soul may say of it, " It is all my own " — nay, better than if all or exclusively his own ; for it is a peace, a joy, a happiness, which, by the electric flash of sympathy passing from heart to heart, becomes, by reason of the multitudes who share it, redoubled, multiplied, boundlessly increased to each. Let no man, therefore, in spiritual things, glory in his own or envy another's good ; for to every individual member of Christ's Church it may be said, "Whatever others have obtained, still the whole, the illimitable all of Truth and Love and Joy is left for you." ^
1 A. Maclaren, A Year's MinisLry, 1st Ser., 209.
2 John Caird, Asjicds of Truth, 207.
PSALM XVI. 5, 6 271
^ God places Himself at the disposal of every one, and it is for us to appropriate Him. The reason why the sun produces in one place geraniums, camellias, azaleas, all forms of exquisite flowers, and does not produce them in another place, is not in the sun. The cause of the difference is in the use to which you put the sun. It shines on the south side of my barn ; and what does it produce there ? A warm spot, where chickens and cows gather. It shines on the south side of my neighbour's barn ; and what does it produce there ? Flowers and grapes. What is the reason of the difference ? Does the sun change ? No ; but it is put to different uses. It is just the same sun, with just the same vivific power to all ; but its effects are different when it is differently employed.^
5. God can become our portion only when we seek Him as the highest good. Like the Levites we must make Him our all, and renounce all that would compete with Him. There cannot be two supreme, any more than there can be two pole- stars, one in the north, and the other in the south to both of which a man can be steering. You cannot stand with
One foot on land, and one on sea, To one thing constant never.
If you are going to have God as your supreme good, you must empty your heart of earth and worldly things, or your possession of Him will be all words, and imagination, and hypocrisy. There must be a fixed, deliberate, intelligent conviction lying at the foundation of my life that God is best, and that He and He only is my true delight and desire. Then there must be built upon that intelligent conviction that God is best the deliberate turning away of the heart from these material treasures. And then there must be the willingness to abandon the outward possession of them if they come in between us and Him.
^ Just as when a chemist collects oxygen in a vessel filled with water, as it passes into the jar it drives out the water before it ; so the love of God, if it come into a man's heart in any real sense, in the measure in which it comes, will deliver him from the love of the world.^
0 love that casts out fear,
0 love that casts out sin, Tarry no more without,
But come and dwell within. ^ H. W. Boeclier. ^ A. Maclarcn, A Years Ministry, 1st Ser., 210.