So let us be thankful that His divine providence does not spoil His children, and make them, as all spoiled children are, a curse and a misery to themselves and to everybody round about them; but He disciplines them by a gracious ‘No’ as well as by a frank, glad ‘Yes,’ and often refuses the petition and grants the deeper-lying meaning of the same.

Therefore, I say that the region in which this great and liberal charter of entire response to our desires has force is simply and only the spiritual region in which the highest good is.  You may grow as Christian men just as fast and just as far as you choose.  A fuller knowledge of God’s truth, a more entire conformity to Christ’s pattern, a deeper communion with God—­they are all possible for every one of us in any measure to which we choose to set our expectations, and to shape our desires and our actions.  ‘Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.’  The stretch of the jaws determines the size of the portion that is put into them; and He Himself who is the only real limit of His gifts, in His endless fulness, always imparts to you and me just as much of Himself as we like and wish to take.  ’Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in yourselves.’

And oh! brethren, what a solemn light such thoughts as that throw on the low attainments of our average Christianity!  So many of us, like Gideon’s fleece, dry in the midst of the dew that comes down from heaven!  So many of us in the midst of the blessed sunshine of His grace, standing like deep gorges on a mountain in cold shadow!  How much you have lying at hand; how little of it you take for your own!

Suppose one of those old Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century had been led into some of those rich Mexican treasure-houses, where all round him were massive bars of gold and gleaming diamonds and precious stones, and had come out from the abundance with sixpence-worth in His palm, when he might have loaded himself with ingots of pure and priceless metal.  That is what some of you do, when Jesus Christ puts the key of His storehouse in your hands and says to you, ’Go in and help yourselves,’ You stop as soon as you are within the threshold.  You do little more than take some insignificant corner nibbled off the great solid mass of riches that might belong to you, and bear that away.  The only conclusion is that you do not care much about His wealth.  Dear brethren, you professing Christian people that are listening to me, if life is scant in your veins, if your faith is, as it is with many of you, all but dead, if your Christian character is very little better than the character of the people round you, if your religion does not give you any happiness, nor do other people much good, if your love is so cold that it has almost expired, and your hopes dim, there is no creature in heaven or earth or hell that is to blame for it but yourselves.  ’Ye have not because ye ask not; ye ask and have not because ye ask amiss.’