That wealth, the fullness of God, takes the shape of, as well as is determined in its measure by the magnitude of, the vessel into which it is put.  It is multiform, and we get whatever we desire, and whatever either our characters or our circumstances require.  The one gift assumes all forms, just as water poured into a vase takes the shape of the vase into which it is poured.  The same gift unfolds itself in an infinite variety of manners, according to the needs of the man to whom it is given; just as the writer’s pen, the carpenter’s hammer, the farmer’s ploughshare, are all made out of the same metal.  So God’s grace comes to you in a different shape from that in which it comes to me, according to our different callings and needs, as fixed by our circumstances, our duties, our sorrows, our temptations.

So, brethren, how shameful it is that, having the possibility of so much, we should have the actuality of so little.  There is an old story about one of our generals in India long ago, who, when he came home, was accused of rapacity because he had brought away so much treasure from the Rajahs whom he had conquered, and his answer to the charge was, ‘I was surprised at my own moderation.’  Ah! there are a great many Christian people who ought to be ashamed of their moderation.  They have gone into the treasure-house; stacks of jewels, jars of gold on all sides of them—­and they have been content to come away with some one poor little coin, when they might have been ’rich beyond the dreams of avarice.’  Brethren, you have ‘access’ to the fullness of God.  Whose fault is it if you are empty?

Then, further, I said there was another meaning in these great words.  The love which may suffuse our lives, the gifts, the consequence of that love, which may enrich our lives, should, and in the measure in which they are received will, adorn and make beautiful our lives.  For ‘grace’ means loveliness as well as goodness, and the God who is the fountain of it all is the fountain of ‘whatsoever things are fair,’ as well as of whatsoever things are good.  That suggests two considerations on which I have no time to dwell.  One is that the highest beauty is goodness, and unless the art of a nation learns that, its art will become filthy and a minister of sin.  They talk about ‘Art for Art’s sake.’  Would that all these poets and painters who are trying to find beauty in corruption—­and there is a phosphorescent glimmer in rotting wood, and a prismatic colouring on the scum of a stagnant pond—­would that all those men who are seeking to find beauty apart from goodness, and so are turning a divine instinct into a servant of evil, would learn that the true gracefulness comes from the grace which is the fullness of God given unto men.

But there is another lesson, and that is that Christian people who say that they have their lives irradiated by the love of God, and who profess to be receiving gifts from His full hand, are bound to take care that their goodness is not ‘harsh and crabbed,’ as not only ‘dull fools suppose’ it to be, but as it sometimes is, but is musical and fair.  You are bound to make your goodness attractive, and to show that the things that are ‘of good report’ are likewise the ’things that are lovely.’