ritance is
the great cause for Christian thankfulness; the more immediate cause is
His preparation of us for it. So we have three points here to consider;
the inheritance; God's Fatherly preparation of His children for it; the
continual temper of thankfulness which these should evoke.

I. The Inheritance.

The frequent recurrence of this idea in the Old Testament supplies Paul
with a thought which he uses to set forth the most characteristic
blessings of the New. The promised land belonged to Israel, and each
member of each tribe had his own little holding in the tribal territory.
Christians have in common the higher spiritual blessings which Christ
brings, and Himself is, and each individual has his own portion of, the
general good.

We must begin by dismissing from our minds the common idea, which a
shallow experience tends to find confirmed by the associations
ordinarily attached to the word 'inheritance,' that it is entered upon
by death. No doubt, that great change does effect an unspeakable change
in our fitness for, and consequently in our possession of, the gifts
which we receive from Christ's pierced hands, and, as the Apostle has
told us, the highest of these possessed on earth is but the 'earnest of
the inheritance'; but we must ever bear in mind that the distinction
between a Christian life on earth and one in heaven is by no means so
sharply drawn in Scripture as it generally is by us, and that death has
by no means so great importance as we faithlessly attribute to it. The
life here and hereafter is like a road which passes the frontiers of two
kingdoms divided by a bridged river, but runs on in the same direction
on both sides of the stream. The flood had to be forded until Jesus
bridged it. The elements of the future and the present are the same, as
the apostolic metaphor of the 'earnest of the inheritance' teaches us.
The handful of soil which constitutes the 'arles' is part of the broad
acres made over by it.

We should be saved from many unworthy conceptions of the future life, if
we held more steadfastly to the great truth that God Himself is the
portion of the inheritance. The human spirit is too great and too
exacting to be satisfied with anything less than Him, and the possession
of Him opens out into every blessedness, and includes all the minor joys
and privileges that can gladden and enrich the soul. We degrade the
future if we think of it only, or even chiefly, as a state in which
faculti