se
mistaken and foolish wishes.

So let us be thankful that His divine providence does not spoil His
children, and make them, as all spoiled children are, a curse and a
misery to themselves and to everybody round about them; but He
disciplines them by a gracious 'No' as well as by a frank, glad 'Yes,'
and often refuses the petition and grants the deeper-lying meaning of
the same.

Therefore, I say that the region in which this great and liberal charter
of entire response to our desires has force is simply and only the
spiritual region in which the highest good is. You may grow as Christian
men just as fast and just as far as you choose. A fuller knowledge of
God's truth, a more entire conformity to Christ's pattern, a deeper
communion with God--they are all possible for every one of us in any
measure to which we choose to set our expectations, and to shape our
desires and our actions. 'Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.' The
stretch of the jaws determines the size of the portion that is put into
them; and He Himself who is the only real limit of His gifts, in His
endless fulness, always imparts to you and me just as much of Himself as
we like and wish to take. 'Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are
straitened in yourselves.'

And oh! brethren, what a solemn light such thoughts as that throw on the
low attainments of our average Christianity! So many of us, like
Gideon's fleece, dry in the midst of the dew that comes down from
heaven! So many of us in the midst of the blessed sunshine of His grace,
standing like deep gorges on a mountain in cold shadow! How much you
have lying at hand; how little of it you take for your own!

Suppose one of those old Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century had
been led into some of those rich Mexican treasure-houses, where all
round him were massive bars of gold and gleaming diamonds and precious
stones, and had come out from the abundance with sixpence-worth in His
palm, when he might have loaded himself with ingots of pure and
priceless metal. That is what some of you do, when Jesus Christ puts the
key of His storehouse in your hands and says to you, 'Go in and help
yourselves,' You stop as soon as you are within the threshold. You do
little more than take some insignificant corner nibbled off the great
solid mass of riches that might belong to you, and bear that away. The
only conclusion is that you do not care much about His wealth. Dear
brethren, you professing Christian