the Son, have the
inheritance for ours, and 'are heirs with God, and joint heirs with
Christ.' So, dear friends, if we would 'be meet for the inheritance of
the saints in light,' we must unite ourselves to that Lord by faith, and
through Him and faith in Him, we shall receive 'the remission of sins
and inheritance among all them that are sanctified.'

THE EARNEST AND THE INHERITANCE

'The earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the
purchased possession.'--Eph. i. 14.

I have dealt with a portion of this verse in conjunction with the
fragment of another in this chapter. I tried to show you how much the
idea of the mutual possession of God by the believing soul, and of the
believing soul by God, was present to the Apostle's thoughts in this
context. These two ideas are brought into close juxtaposition in the
verse before us, for, as you will see if you use the Revised Version,
the latter clause is there rightly paraphrased by the addition of a
supplement, and reads 'until the redemption of God's own possession.' So
that in the first clause we have 'our inheritance,' and in the second we
have 'God's possession.' This double idea, however, has appended to it
in this verse some very striking and important thoughts. The possession
of both sides is regarded as incomplete, for what _we_ have is the
'earnest' of the 'inheritance,' and '_God's_ own possession' has yet to
be 'redeemed,' in the fullest sense of that word, at some point in the
future. An 'earnest' is a fraction of an inheritance, or of a sum
hereafter to be paid, and is the guarantee and pledge that the whole
shall one day be handed over to the man who has received the foretaste
of it in the 'earnest.' The soldier's shilling, the ploughman's 'arles,'
the clod of earth and tuft of grass which, in some forms of transfer,
were handed over to the purchaser, were all the guarantee that the rest
was going to come. So the great future is sealed to us by the small
present and the experiences of the Christian life to-day, imperfect,
fragmentary, defective as they are, are the best prophecy and the most
glorious pledge of that great to-morrow. The same law of continuity
which, in application to our characters, and our work, and our daily
life, makes 'to-morrow as this day, and much more abundant,' in its
application to the future life makes the life here its parent, and the
life yonder the prolongation and the raising to its highest power, of