ho could understand the shaft unless he
could look up through the aperture, and see the summit? And who can
think of life as anything but a wretched fragment unless he knows
that all which begins here runs upwards into the room above, and
there finds its explanation and its completion?

But there is the third sphere of the divine operation. As in creation
and in providence, so in all the work and mystery of our redemption,
this is the goal that God has in view. It was not worth Christ's
while to come and die, if nothing more was to come of it than the
imperfect reception of His blessings and gifts which the noblest
Christian life in this world presents. The meaning and purpose of the
Cross, the meaning and purpose of all the patient dealings of His
whispering Spirit, are that we shall be like our Divine Lord in
spirit first, and in body afterwards.

And everything about the experiences of a true Christian spirit is
charged with a prophecy of immortality. I have not time to dwell upon
one point gathered from the context, that I intended to have insisted
upon, viz. that the very desires which God's good Spirit works in a
believing soul are themselves confirmations of their own fulfilment.
But if you notice at your leisure the verses that precede my text,
you will find that the Apostle adduces the groanings of 'earnest
desire to be clothed with our house which is from Heaven,' as a proof
that we _have_ 'a building of God, a house not made with hands.'
That is to say, every longing in a Christian heart when it is most
filled with that Spirit, and most in contact with God, and which is
the answer of that heart to a promise of Christ--every such longing
carries with it the assurance of its own fulfilment. He that hath
wrought it has wrought it in order that the desire may fit us for its
answer, and that the open mouth may be ready for the abundant filling
which His grace designs. He works upon us, therefore, by making us
desire a gift, and then He gives that which He desires. So let us
cherish these longings, not for the accident of escaping death, nor
as choosing the path by which we shall reach the blessed issue, but
longing for that great issue itself; and try to keep more distinct
and clear before all our minds this thought, 'God means for me the
participation in Christ's glorified Manhood, and my attaining of that
Manhood is the end that He has in view in all that He does with me.'

III. So I must say one word about t