e mixture of human infirmity and error; nor yet, in its worst
branches, has ever lost altogether the seal of Christ's Spirit, nor
ceased to believe in Christ crucified.

But the next words are of more particular concern to us here. "The
world, and life, and death, and things present, and things to come, are
all ours." They are all ours, so far as we are Christ's. The world is
ours; its manifold riches and delights, its various wisdom, all are
ours. They are ours, not as a thing stolen, and which will be taken from
us with a heavy over-payment of penalty, because we stole it when it did
not belong to us; but they are ours by God's free gift, to minister to
our comfort, and to our good. And this is the great difference; the good
things of this world are stolen by many; but they belong, by God's gift,
to those only who are Christ's: and there is the sure sign, generally,
to be seen of their being stolen,--an unwillingness that He to whom of
right they belong should see them. What a man steals, he enjoys, as it
were, in fear: if the owner of it finds him with it, then all his
enjoyment is gone; he wishes that he had never touched it; it is no
source of pleasure to him, but merely one of terror. And so it is often
with our stolen pleasures,--stolen, I mean, not in respect of man, but
of God,--stolen, because we do not feel them to be God's gift, nor
receive them, as from him, with thankfulness. They may be very lawful
pleasures, so far as other men are concerned; pleasures bought, it may
be, with our own money, or given to us by our own friends, and enjoyed
without any injury to any one. They may be the very simplest enjoyments
of life, our health, the fresh air, our common food, our common
amusements, our common society; things most permitted to us all, as far
as man is concerned, but yet things which are constantly stolen by us,
because we take them without God's leave, and enjoy them not as his
gifts. They are all his, and he gives them freely to his children. If we
are his children, he gives them to us; and delights in our enjoyment of
them, as any human father loves to see the pleasure of his children in
those things which it is good for them to enjoy. But then, is any child
afraid of his father so seeing him? or is the thought of his father any
interruption to his enjoyment? If it would be, we should be sure that
there was something wrong; that the enjoyment, either in itself, or with
respect to the particular case of t