On some anniversary day you take up that ring, and you repolish it until all the old luster comes back, and you can see in it the flash of eyes that long ago ceased to weep.  Oh, it is not an unmeaning thing when I tell you that when Christ receives a soul into His keeping He puts on it a marriage-ring.  He endows you from that moment with all His wealth.  You are one—­Christ and the soul—­one in sympathy, one in affection, one in hope.

There is no power in earth or hell to effect a divorcement after Christ and the soul are united.  Other kings have turned out their companions when they got weary of them, and sent them adrift from the palace gate.  Ahasuerus banished Vashti; Napoleon forsook Josephine; but Christ is the husband that is true forever.  Having loved you once, He loves you to the end.  Did they not try to divorce Margaret, the Scotch girl, from Jesus?  They said:  “You must give up your religion.”  She said:  “I can’t give up my religion.”  And so they took her down to the beach of the sea, and they drove in a stake at low-water mark, and they fastened her to it, expecting that as the tide came up her faith would fail.  The tide began to rise, and came up higher and higher, and to the girdle, and to the lip, and in the last moment, just as the wave was washing her soul into glory, she shouted the praises of Jesus.

Oh, no, you can not separate a soul from Christ!  It is an everlasting marriage.  Battle and storm and darkness can not do it.  Is it too much exultation for a man, who is but dust and ashes like myself, to cry out this morning:  “I am persuaded that neither height, nor depth, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature shall separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord”?  Glory be to God that when Christ and the soul are married they are bound by a chain, a golden chain—­if I might say so—­a chain with one link, and that one link the golden ring of God’s everlasting love.

I go a step further, and tell you that when Christ receives a soul into His love He puts on him the ring of festivity.  You know that it has been the custom in all ages to bestow rings on very happy occasions.  There is nothing more appropriate for a birthday gift than a ring.  You delight to bestow such a gift upon your children at such a time.  It means joy, hilarity, festivity.  Well, when this old man of the text wanted to tell how glad he was that his boy had got back, he expressed it in this way.  Actually, before he ordered sandals to be put on his bare feet; before he ordered the fatted calf to be killed to appease the boy’s hunger, he commanded:  “Put a ring on his hand.”

Oh, it is a merry time when Christ and the soul are united!  Joy of forgiveness!  What a splendid thing it is to feel that all is right between me and God.  What a glorious thing it is to have God just take up all the sins of my life and put them in one bundle, and then fling them into the depths of the sea, never to rise again, never to be talked of again.  Pollution all gone.  Darkness all illumined.  God reconciled.  The prodigal home.  “Put a ring on his hand.”