heirs at last.  You have but to take the faith, the love, the obedience, the communion of the highest moments of the Christian life on earth, and free them from all their limitations, subtract from them all their imperfections, multiply them to their superlative possibility, and endow them with a continual power of growth, and stretch them out to absolute eternity, and you get heaven.  The earnest is of a piece with the inheritance.

So, dear brethren, here is a gift offered for us all, a gift which our feebleness sorely needs, a gift for every timid nature, for every weak will, for every man, woman, and child beset with snares and fighting with heavy tasks, the offer of a reinforcement as real and as sure to bring victory as when, on that day when the fate of Europe was determined, after long hours of conflict, the Prussian bugles blew, and the English commander knew that (with the fresh troops that came on the field) victory was made certain.  So you and I may have in our hearts the Spirit of God, the spirit of strength, the spirit of love and of a sound mind, the spirit of adoption, the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, to enlighten our darkness, to bind our hearts to Him, to quicken and energise our souls, to make the weakest among us strong, and the strong as an angel of God.  And the condition on which we may get it is this simple one which the Apostle lays down; ’After that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance.’  The Christ, who is the Lord and Giver of the Spirit, has shown us how its blessed influences may be ours when, on the great day of the feast, He stood and cried with a voice that echoes across the centuries, and is meant for each of us, ’If any man thirsts, let him come unto Me and drink.  He that believeth in Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.  This spake He of the Spirit which they that believe or Him should receive.’

THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION

   ’Thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us in triumph
   in Christ and maketh manifest through us the savour of
   His knowledge in every place.’—­2 COR. ii. 14 (R.V.)

I suppose most of us have some knowledge of what a Roman Triumph was, and can picture to ourselves the long procession, the victorious general in his chariot with its white horses, the laurelled soldiers, the sullen captives, with suppressed hate flashing in their sunken eyes, the wreathing clouds of incense that went up into the blue sky, and the shouting multitude of spectators.  That is the picture in the Apostle’s mind here.  The Revised Version correctly alters the translation into ’Thanks unto God which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ.’

Paul thinks of himself and of his coadjutors in Christian work as being conquered captives, made to follow their Conqueror and to swell His triumph.  He is thankful to be so overcome.  What was deepest degradation is to him supreme honour.  Curses in many a strange tongue would break from the lips of the prisoners who had to follow the general’s victorious chariot.  But from Paul’s lips comes irrepressible praise; he joins in the shout of acclamation to the Conqueror.