at power is the unlimited limit of the
possibilities of our possession. His gifts are proportioned to His
resources. While He is rich, can I be poor? The only real limit to His
bestowal is His own fulness. Of course, at each moment, our capacity of
receiving is for the time being the practical limit of our possession,
but that capacity varies indefinitely, and may be, and should be,
indefinitely and continuously increasing. It is an elastic boundary, and
hence we may go on making our own as much as we will, and progressively
more and more, of God's strength. He gives it all, but there is a
tragical difference between the full cup put into our hands and the few
drops carried to our lips. The key of the treasure-chamber is in our
possession, and on each of us His gracious face smiles the permission
which His gracious lips utter in words, 'Be it unto thee even as thou
wilt.' If we are conscious of defect, if our weakness is beaten by the
assaults of temptation, or crushed by sorrows that ride it down in a
fierce attack, the fault is our own. We have, if we choose to make it
our own and to use it as ours, more than enough to make us 'more than
conquerors' over all sins and all sorrows.

But when we contrast what we have by God's gift and what we have in our
personal experience and use in our daily life, the contrast may well
bring shame, even though the contrast brings to us hope to lighten the
shame. The average experience of present-day Christians reminds one of
the great tanks that may be seen in India, that have been suffered to go
to ruin, and so an elaborate system of irrigation comes to nothing, and
the great river that should have been drawn off into them runs past
them, all but unused. Repair them and keep the sluices open, and all
will blossom again.

III. The great purpose of this strength.

'Patience and longsuffering with joyfulness' seems at first but a poor
result of such a force, but it comes from a heart that was under no
illusions as to the facts of human life, and it finds a response in us
all. It may be difficult to discriminate 'patience' from
'longsuffering,' but the general notion here is that one of the highest
uses for which divine strength is given to us, is to make us able to
meet the antagonism of evil without its shaking our souls. He who
patiently endures without despondency or the desire to 'recompense evil
for evil,' and to whom by faith even 'the night is light about him,' is
far on the w