in
order to get the gift we must go up. They are in the heavenly places,
and they cannot live anywhere else. They have been sticking shrubs in
tubs outside our public buildings this last week. How long will they
keep their leaves and their freshness? How soon will they need to be
shifted and taken back again to the sweeter air, where they can
flourish? God's spiritual gifts cannot grow in smoke and dirt and a
polluted atmosphere. And if a professing Christian man lives his life on
the low levels he will have very few of the heavenly gifts coming down
to him there. And that is the reason--_the_ reason above all
others--why, with such a large provision made for all possible
necessities and longings of all sorts, people who call themselves
Christians go up and down the world feeble and poor, and with little
enjoyment of their religion, and having verified scarcely anything of
the great promises which God has given them.

Brother, according to the old word with which the Mass used to begin,
'_Sursum corda_'--up with your hearts! The blessings are in the heavens,
and if we want them we must go where they are. It is not enough to drink
sparing draughts from the stream as it flows through the plain. Travel
up to the headwaters, where the great pure fountain is, that gushes out
abundant and inexhaustible. The gifts are heavenly, and there they
abide, and thither we must mount if we would possess them.

Now that this understanding of the words is correct I think is clearly
shown by a verse in the next chapter, where we find the very same
phrase employed. In this connection the Apostle says that 'God hath
raised us up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' That is to
say, the true ideal of the Christian life is that, even here and now, it
is a life of such intimate union and incorporation with Jesus Christ as
that where He is we are, and that even whilst we tabernacle upon earth
and move about amongst its illusions and changing scenes, in the depth
of our true being we may be fixed, and sit at rest with Christ where He
is.

Do not dismiss that as mere pulpit rhetoric. Do not say that it is
mystical and incomprehensible, and cannot be reduced into practice
amidst the distractions of daily life. Brethren, it is not so! Jesus
Christ Himself said about Himself that He came down from heaven, and
that though He did, even whilst He wore the likeness of the flesh, and
was one of us, He was 'the Son of Man which _is_ in Heaven,