od should
confer upon you such blessedness and glory. Your faith almost
staggers at the promise. You are ready to say--

"How can it be, thou Heavenly King,
That thou should'st us to glory bring--
Make slaves the partners of thy throne,
Deck'd with a never-fading crown?"

Let your faith be invigorated by the assurance that this is
settled beyond dispute by God's eternal purpose. It is decreed.
"To him that overcometh will I give to sit down with me on my
throne." "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being
predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all
things after the counsel of his own will." Nor has this measure
been forced upon Jehovah. It is sometimes the case that
sovereigns are compelled to yield privileges to restless and
revolted subjects. Sometimes contemporary sovereignties combine
to force a reluctant ruler into arrangements contrary to his
preconceived and preferred policy. Sometimes potent rulers yield
their preferences to the sway of sage and influential counsellors,
and find themselves committed to a policy which they execute with
reluctance, and with exceptions. It is not so with any of the
decrees of the Most High. Who, being his counsellor, hath taught
him? He "worketh all things according to the counsel of his own
will." "It is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."
It is no less the pleasure of the Son: "Father, I will that they
also that thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may
behold my glory." And he has power to carry out his purposes to
their entire fulfilment. O, how precious is this doctrine of Divine
predestination!

You may have enemies. There may be those who would deny you a
place in the church on earth. You may have been excommunicated
and cursed for worshipping the God of your fathers after the
manner which some call heresy. Your enemies would fain keep you
out of heaven. They profess to be able to do so. But they are
mistaken. God has not left it to them to determine who shall
enter heaven and who shall not. He has fixed the conditions of
salvation independently of their counsels--long before they
existed--before the sun began his course. "He will have mercy on
whom he will have mercy." To accomplish their end, they must be
able to go behind all human arrangements to the decrees, the
purposes of heaven, and revoke them. Will they be able to do
that? Or, if unable to revoke, or induce him to revoke his
decrees, wil