’Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of
   the Spirit in our hearts.’—­2 COR. i. 23.

There are three strong metaphors in this and the preceding verse—­’anointing,’ ‘sealing,’ and ’giving the earnest’—­all of which find their reality in the same divine act.  These three metaphors all refer to the same subject, and what that subject is is sufficiently explained in the last of them.  The ‘earnest’ consists of ’the Spirit in our hearts,’ and the same explanation might have been appended to both the preceding clauses, for the ‘anointing’ is the anointing of the Spirit, and the ‘seal’ is the seal of the Spirit.  Further, these three metaphors all refer to one and the same act.  They are not three things, but three aspects of one thing, just as a sunbeam might be regarded either as the source of warmth, or of light, or of chemical action.  So the one gift of the one Spirit, ‘anoints,’ ‘seals,’ and is the ‘earnest.’  Further, these three metaphors all declare a universal prerogative of Christians.  Every man that loves Jesus Christ has the Spirit in the measure of his faith,’ and if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.’

I. Note the first metaphor in the text—­the ‘seal’ of the Spirit.

A seal is impressed upon a recipient material made soft by warmth, in order to leave there a copy of itself.  Now it is not fanciful, nor riding a metaphor to death, when I dwell upon these features of the emblem in order to suggest their analogies in Christian life.  The Spirit of God comes into our spirits, and by gentle contact impresses upon the material, which was intractable until it was melted by the genial warmth of faith and love, the likeness of Himself, but yet so as that prominences correspond to the hollows, and what is in relief in the one is sunk in the other.  Expand that general statement for a moment or two.

The effect of all the divine indwelling, which is the characteristic gift of Christ to every Christian soul, is to mould the recipient into the image of the divine inhabitant.  There is in the human spirit—­such are its dignity amidst its ruins, and its nobility shining through its degradation—­a capacity of receiving that image of God which consists not only in voluntary and intelligent action and the consciousness of personal being, but in the love of the things that are fair, and in righteousness, and true holiness.  His Spirit, entering into a heart, will make that heart wise with its own wisdom, strong with some infusion of its own strength, gracious with some drops of its own grace, gentle with some softening from its own gentleness, holy with some purity reflected from its own transcendent whiteness.  The Spirit, which is life, moulds the heart into which it enters to a kindred, and, therefore, similar life.