nd sorrow should take place, and they should at
once occupy our hearts. Yet if His strength be ours we shall be strong
to submit and acquiesce, strong to look deep enough to see His will as
the foundation of all and as ever busy for our good, strong to hope,
strong to discern the love at work, strong to trust the Father even when
He chastens. And all this will make it possible to have the paradox
practically realised in our own experience, 'As sorrowful yet always
rejoicing.' One has seen potassium burning underwater. Our joy may burn
under waves of sorrow. Let us bring our weakness to Jesus Christ and
grasp Him as did the sinking Peter. He will breathe His own grace into
us, and speak to our feeble and perchance sorrowful hearts, as He had
done long before Paul's words to the Colossians, 'My grace is sufficient
for thee, and my strength is made perfect in weakness.'

THANKFUL FOR INHERITANCE

'Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet
to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
in light.'--COL. i. 12 (R.V.)

It is interesting to notice how much the thought of inheritance seems to
have been filling the Apostle's mind during his writing of Ephesians and
Colossians. Its recurrence is one of the points of contact between them.
For example, in Ephesians, we read, 'In whom also were made a heritage'
(i. 11); 'An earnest of our inheritance' (i. 14); 'His inheritance in
the saints' (i. 18); 'Inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ' (v. 5). We
notice too that in the address to the Elders of the Church at Ephesus,
we read of 'the inheritance among all them that are sanctified' (Acts
20-32).

In the text the climax of the Apostle's prayer is presented as
thankfulness, the perpetual recognition of the Divine hand in all that
befalls us, the perpetual confidence that all which befalls us is good,
and the perpetual gushing out towards Him of love and praise. The
highest diligence, the most strenuous fruit-bearing, and the most
submissive patience and longsuffering would be incomplete without the
consecration of a grateful heart, and the noblest beauty of a Christian
character would lack its rarest lustre. This crown of Christian
perfectness the Apostle regards as being called into action mainly by
the contemplation of that great act and continuous work of God's
Fatherly love by which he makes us fit for our portion of the
inheritance which the same love has prepared for us. That inhe