Now if we take all these three thoughts as blended together in the grand metaphor of the Apostle, of the ample space into which the Christian man passes, we get such lessons as this.  A Christian life may, and therefore should, be suffused with a continual consciousness of the love of God.  That would change everything in it.  Here is some great sweep of rolling country, perhaps a Highland moor:  the little tarns on it are grey and cold, the vegetation is gloomy and dark, dreariness is over all the scene, because there is a great pall of cloud drawn beneath the blue.  But the sun pierces with his lances through the grey, and crumples up the mists, and sends them flying beneath the horizon.  Then what a change in the landscape!  All the tarns that looked black and wicked are now infantile in their innocent blue and sunny gladness, and every dimple in the heights shows, and all the heather burns with the sunshine that falls upon it.  So my lonely doleful life, if that light from God, the beam of His love, shines down upon it, rises into nobility, and flashes into beauty, and is calm and fair and great, as nothing else can make it.  You may dwell in love by dwelling in God, and then your lives will be fair.  You have access into the grace; see that you go there.  They tell us that nightingales sing by the wayside by preference, and we may have in our lives, singing a quiet tune, the continual thought of the love of God, even whilst life’s highway is dusty and rough, and our feet are often weary in treading it.  A Christian life may be, and therefore should be, suffused with the sense of the abiding love of God.

Take the other meaning of the word, the secondary and derived meaning, the communication of that love to us, and that leads us to say that a Christian life may, and therefore should, be enriched with continual gifts from God’s fullness.  I said that the Apostle was using a metaphor here, regarding the grace as being an ample space into which a man was admitted, or we may say that he is thinking of it as a great treasure-house.  We have the right of entrance there, where on every side, as it were, lie ingots of uncoined gold, and masses of treasure, and we may have just as much or as little as we choose.  It is entirely in our own determination how much of the wealth of God we shall possess.  We have access to the treasure-house; and this permit is put into our hands:  ’Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’  The size of the sack that the man brings, in the old story, determined the amount of wealth that he carried away.  Some of you bring very tiny baskets and expect little and desire little; you get no more than you desired and expected.