Psalms 16

Subdivision 3. (Psalms 16:1-11; Psalms 17:1-15; Psalms 18:1-50; Psalms 19:1-14; Psalms 20:1-9; Psalms 21:1-13; Psalms 22:1-31; Psalms 23:1-6; Psalms 24:1-10; Psalms 25:1-22; Psalms 26:1-12; Psalms 27:1-14; Psalms 28:1-9; Psalms 29:1-11; Psalms 30:1-12; Psalms 31:1-24; Psalms 32:1-11; Psalms 33:1-22; Psalms 34:1-22; Psalms 35:1-28; Psalms 36:1-12; Psalms 37:1-40; Psalms 38:1-22; Psalms 39:1-13; Psalms 40:1-17; Psalms 41:1-13.)“In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and by Him to reconcile.” The third subdivision of the first book contains by far the largest portion of it, twenty-six psalms, and these also larger and more various, on the whole, than those preceding it. When we consider its subject, this is not to be wondered at. We are led in them into the very heart of the book, that being in reality the heart of Christ Himself, which is here unveiled for us in some sense as it scarcely is in the New Testament even. The twenty-second psalm is an illustration of this. The Spirit of Christ that spake in David is indeed here most manifestly declared. The quotation from Colossians, which I have taken as expressing the theme of this subdivision, seems quite apt to do this. We have not, indeed, in this part of the Psalms the express declaration of Christ’s deity, which we do have, for example, in the hundred and second. Yet we have had already, in the second, His divine sonship as born into the world; and we have here, in this glorious Person, God brought nigh to man and ministry to his need in such sort as only divine fullness can explain. And this goes on, as we see, to atonement and its results, -to the complete character of it as sin-offering and burnt-offering both, with iniquity forgiven and sin covered, and the glorious hiding-place of the sinner in God Himself. (Psalms 22:1-31; Psalms 40:1-17; Psalms 32:1-11.) In the application of this blessed work we of course stop short of the full Christian position, and this will be plain as we go through what is here; but in the revelation of Christ personally, in the wonder of that unique humanity which the New Testament shows us in actual fulfillment in the living Jesus, we shall find what in all Scripture seems not transcended, and in the mystery of the cross itself. May we realize fully, as we take it up, that it is “the mystery of godliness”; and find our hearts afresh warmed, aroused, energized, inspired by it. May He who has written it unfold and use it for our blessing and His praise! Section 1. (Psalms 16:1-11; Psalms 17:1-15; Psalms 18:1-50; Psalms 19:1-14; Psalms 20:1-9; Psalms 21:1-13; Psalms 22:1-31; Psalms 23:1-6; Psalms 24:1-10.)Christ the Source of Blessing. The structure of the third subdivision is markedly parallel to that of the first (Psalms 1:1-6; Psalms 2:1-12; Psalms 3:1-8; Psalms 4:1-8; Psalms 5:1-12; Psalms 6:1-10; Psalms 7:1-17; Psalms 8:1-9). It begins with a Messianic section, which is followed by one giving the exercises and experiences of faith, in a latter-day remnant of Israel specifically, though susceptible of the widest application to believers generally. Finally it closes with a still briefer Messianic section. Thus we begin and end with Christ, as God does; while between come in a multitude of human thoughts, feelings, and experiences, some true and good, some of a very mixed nature, but which in the end find Christ once more as the goal they lead to and their answer and rest. The first section here consists of nine psalms, a number which we have found generally -which is perhaps always -a 3 x 3, the divine number intensified. So we find it here. The whole section speaks of Christ as the source of blessing to His people, giving in fact nearly the entire theme of the subdivision, only two Messianic psalms remaining for the close. Series 1. (Psalms 16:1-11; Psalms 17:1-15; Psalms 18:1-50.)Christ identifying Himself with the people, and identified with them by God. The first series, therefore, is of three psalms only: “Christ identifying Himself with the people, and identified with them by God.” This is plainly the key of all that follows, although as yet we have not atonement, which is its necessary outcome. The principle is announced in the very beginning of the next (the sixteenth) psalm, and it is gradually developed in the succeeding ones.

Psalms 16:1-11

The all-Obedient One. Michtam of David.
The first psalm here gives us Christ as the obedient One on earth. That He is Himself the speaker we may see from the tenth verse, which exclusively applies to Him. He alone is that “holy” or “pious one” who, as such, could not “see corruption” in the grave. So Peter conclusively argues, and he who knows Christ should recognize the features of his Beloved all through the psalm. The fourth verse is a difficulty, no doubt, although idolatry in its various forms was around the Lord, above all in His Galilean ministry. Galilee was then “Galilee of the Gentiles,” and Israel too was far from clear.

But the background also seems always that of the last days, or at least these are in prospect; and thus their peculiar features -for Israel will fall again into idolatry in the last days -are specialized accordingly. Perspective in the prophets is often greatly foreshortened; but this feature was not absent during the Lord’s sojourn in Israel. Considering the psalm as a whole, a brief glance will show how fully Christ is told out here. The psalm has five divisions, -is therefore a little pentateuch: for the Pentateuch in the new light of Christianity covers, as we know, the whole of man’s spiritual life here, a divine “pilgrim’s progress”; and in this case we have the One perfect pilgrim seen all through. First, in one verse, you have the character of His whole life, -so strange for Him indeed, if we consider what He was; and yet on that very account brought into prominence here. His life a life of dependence, a life of faith, Himself “Leader and Finisher of faith.” “Preserve me, O God! for in Thee do I put my trust.” Then, two verses show Him taking distinctly His place, not as God in divine supremacy, but as Man with men, and for men, -for the saints, in whom is all His delight. Next, three verses proclaim Jehovah Himself His portion; His lot therefore being maintained by Him in pleasant places. Fourthly, two verses speak of Him as in His path, content to be led, a learner, taught of divine wisdom, the object before Him being only God; and thus of the unfaltering steadfastness ever of His steps. While, lastly, three verses trace this path to its end in glory; a way of life found through death itself into the presence of God -the pleasures at His right hand for evermore. The Lord enable us with wisdom and with reverence to look at these things more in detail; and may our “meditation of Him be sweet” indeed. This psalm is the first with the inscription “Michtam” -“Michtam of David.” For this there are three different meanings given, the common one being the marginal one, “a golden psalm”; but some say, “a hidden” one, a psalm with a hidden meaning; and some say “engraved,” so as not to pass away. Delitzsch gives “a psalm with pithy sayings,” an “epigram.” There are five others similarly inscribed, 56 -60, but of very different character from the present, to which one might conceive either of the first meanings being appropriate; but they add nothing that one can realize as of value to the understanding of the psalm.

1. If the sixteenth psalm be pentateuchal, the comparison with the first pentateuch should have interest for us. The theme of the first book, Genesis, is life, and that not simply of fallen and ruined, but much more of restored and renewed man. Of this not only the typical side of the six days, but also those biographies of which it is so largely composed, very plainly speak. This new life, as developed in a world departed from God and under death, manifests itself in a practical life of faith, whose springs and resources are in the unseen things,which are, in contrast with the seen, the things eternal. In us, because fallen, life begins with a new birth; and where it exists, it is found in contrast with another principle within us, Cain-like, the elder born. The “works of the flesh,” too, alas, are found disfiguring, how much, the life of faith. We are now to contemplate the perfection of One in whom nature was never fallen, in whom there was no principle of evil, and upon whom (after thirty years passed in the world) the Father could set the seal of perfect approbation. There is no dark preface to His spiritual history; and yet as truly as -more truly than -with any of us, His life was a life of faith. Hard as it is (just because of what we know Him to be) to realize this, Scripture assures us of it in the fullest way. The epistle to the Hebrews, in giving the brotherhood of the sanctified to Him by whom they are sanctified, brings forward as applying to Him, a text exactly similar to the one before us: “I will put my trust in Him.” (Hebrews 2:13).

And again, in a passage to which we have referred, asserts Him to be the “author” -rather “leader” -“and finisher of faith,” (Hebrews 12:2), the One who in His own Person completed the whole course of it. The glory of His Godhead must not, therefore, obscure for us the truth and perfection of His manhood. He is the One of whom it could be said, “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given,” while at the very same time “His name” was to be called “the Mighty God.” (Isaiah 9:6.) And the gospel of Luke declares Him as a child to have grown in wisdom as in stature. How impossible for any uninspired writer to have given us such an account of Him who is “God over all, blessed forever”! But God is earnest to have us know the full grace thus expressed. “Descended into the lower parts of the earth” to reach us, He is seeking intimacy. He is assuring us of His ability to sympathize with us in every sinless human experience, “in all things tempted like as we are, sin apart.” (Hebrews 4:15.) This, too, is His perfection, which could not be manifest in the same way, if not subject to real and full trial. To explain or reconcile it with His Godhead, we may be quite unable: we are not called to do it. The blessed truth we need, and can accept, reverently remembering that “no one knoweth the Son, but the Father.” (Matthew 11:27.) The depths of His love are revealed in the abysses of His humiliation; and here we find our present satisfaction and our joy forever. We must, not for a moment, suffer ourselves to be deprived of it; we must not allow its reality to be dimmed. “Preserve me, O Mighty: for in Thee have I taken refuge,” is the language of One as absolutely in need of God, and hanging upon Him, as any one whosoever. He is in man’s world, such as sin has made it, not to hide Himself in any wise from its sorrows, but to know them all. Power may be in His hand, and manifested without stint in behalf of others; but for Himself He has none, will use none: to satisfy the hunger of forty days He will not make for Himself the bread which the need of others shall gain from Him without seeking. Conscious of the bleakness and barrenness of the scene into which he has come, “in Thee,” He says, “I have taken refuge.” The “dove in the clefts of the rock” is not our emblem only; it was His in days of keen distress when, “though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things that He suffered,” (Hebrews 5:8); -learned, as a new thing for Him, what obedience was. Precious assurance for us! Christ the very pattern of faith in its every character, in every circumstance of trial: feeling all. indeed, with His capacity for feeling, where was no callousness, or dullness, or incompetence of any kind. With this, then, the “golden” sixteenth psalm begins. 2. In the next two verses the speaker declares Jehovah to be His Lord. He to whom obedience was a strange thing takes expressly the place of it. We had swerved from the path, even where it began, in Eden, as soon as put on it: had turned every one to his own way, as if it were well proved that our wisdom was more than God’s, and as if we owed Him nothing who created us. He, the Creator, comes therefore now Himself to take up and prove the path of His own ordinance, -not as He had ordained it, however, but far otherwise; amid all to show us that it was still no worse than He was content to walk in; -to show how for Him it could be meat and drink to do His Father’s will: to approve and vindicate it at His own cost, when it cost Him all. “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O my God,” was the one purpose of His heart on earth. We allow ourselves many objects. We shrink from the intolerable thought of an absolute sovereign will with a claim upon us at all times, and one strictly defined path from which there is to be no wandering. But God revealed as He is now revealed makes that sovereignty the joy of a soul that knows that His will can only be according to His nature. For us, love, able to show itself as that, characterizes all His ways with us. But what was it for Him who had (as we have not) to meet the prior demands of righteousness upon us, that love might be free to show itself toward us?

His path was not that which the Father’s love to Him would have dictated. Would not a man “spare his own son that serveth him”? But He “spared not His Son, but delivered Him up for us all.” How wondrous a Leader have we, then, in the path of obedience, who came expressly to fulfill this: “by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”! (Hebrews 10:10.) Thus He says now to Jehovah, “my goodness extendeth not to Thee,” -words which are explained by that which follows: “it is for the saints that are upon the earth and the excellent.” That is, it is not to profit me with Thee: it is, in fact, the expression of that divine goodness, the ’love" that “seeketh not its own,” but the blessing of others; and this, while the Speaker takes His place distinctly as the Servant of Jehovah, to do His will. Here, evidently, then, is the keynote of all that follows: how important that we should realize its meaning! No doubt it will be objected that David could not have used the words intelligently in this way. But he did speak of the resurrection of Christ in the tenth verse, as is plain, and as Peter bore witness to the Jews in his day (Acts 2:30-31), and there there can be no plea of any typical fulfillment or experience of David himself at all. The prophets spoke better than they knew, and did not always understand what they foretold, as the same Peter insists (1 Peter 1:11-12). Therefore to limit things to David’s intelligence is not intelligent, even if we knew (as we do not know) just how much that was. Christ alone, then, could be the real Speaker here; and thus moved by Divine love toward men, He does not take the place before God to which His perfection would entitle Him. It is not to avail for Him, to give Him the place due to His absolute obedience: otherwise the death of the cross -death in any way -could never have been His portion. This obedience of His -this goodness manifested in obedience -was for the saints, the excellent of the earth, in whom was His delight. For this it must be “obedience unto death,” -going as far as that. (Philippians 2:8.) He must empty himself of all, -sell all that He hath, if He would have what to Him is “treasure.” (Matthew 13:44.) Thus He dignifies His poor people with such titles as the saints, the excellent." Nothing but grace in Him could account them so. Not that there is not in them true spiritual worth and moral beauty: they surely are, they must be, what He calls them. Yes; but they are made so by His call. And His heart looks on to the time of perfect consummation, when the glory of His workmanship shall be seen in them. “According to the time shall it be said of Jacob and of Israel, What has God wrought!” Thus shall we be not only, as Jacobs, “to the praise of the glory of His grace,” but as Israels also, “to the praise of His glory,” (Ephesians 1:6; Ephesians 1:12), which then shall be seen upon us. Thus, then, the Lord descends to a path which displays His love to His own, and in which His personal claim on God is given up, that we might have claim. These two verses, therefore, give fittingly the Exodus section of this psalm, -which, as applied to Him, exhibits, not redemption, but the Redeemer. Not yet, indeed, is it seen how low His grace must stoop: the twenty-second psalm, for the first time, fully discloses that. Here it is the personal love which puts Him upon the path which, to accomplish such a purpose, cannot end but with the Cross. 3. Now comes the Leviticus section,which shows us what God is to this perfect man. He is His all: most beautifully told out in the words, “the measure of My portion and of My cup.” As it was said of the Levites, “The Lord is their inheritance,” so Christ is seen here as the true Levite. But first we have, what has been objected as fatal to any Messianic interpretation of the psalms, the emphatic denunciation of those who “run after another” god. When we consider Israel’s history, it is not to be wondered that what is emphasized as the sin of the legal dispensation, Jehovah’s controversy with His people, even from the deliverance out of Egypt until their captivity in Babylon, should be denounced by the lips of Messiah. To say that in the days of the Herods and of heathen governors, the land swarming with the heathen, this evil was wholly extinguished even in Israel, so that it should be inappropriate for Him to utter His abhorrence of it, would surely be to go beyond the proof. Nor was the Lord’s prophecy of an “abomination of desolation, standing in the holy place,” fulfilled by the idolatrous ensigns of the Romans after the capture of the city, but looks forward to a form of idolatry yet to be found in the midst of Israel, in days preceding, by a short time only, His coming again. (Matthew 24:1-51.) Why, then, such a warning as this should be unsuitable to a Messianic standpoint it would be difficult to say. To the law which prohibited all other gods, not only does His full heart respond; but he declares Jehovah to be His entire portion, -the measure of it, -its whole content. But who, then, can measure this? It is a measure immeasurable, leaving room for nothing beyond, nothing more to be added to it. “My portion and my cup:” what is the difference? My portion is what belongs to me, -what is mine, whether or not I enjoy it. My cup is what I actually appropriate, or make my own. Eating and drinking are significant of actual participation and enjoyment. Many a person has in this world a portion which he cannot enjoy; and many a one has a portion which (through moral perversity, it may be,) he does not enjoy. With the Lord, indeed, His portion and His joy were one: Jehovah was the measure of both. He had nothing beside; He wanted nothing beside. These two things should be found, through grace, in the Christian also. For all it is true, that God is the measure of our portion, -we have no other. Oh, that it were equally true that He was the measure of our cup, -of our enjoyment! How strange and sorrowful that for us both should not be realized! How wonderful that we should seek elsewhere what cannot be found, while we leave unexplored the glories of an inheritance which is actually our own. We covet a wilderness, while we neglect a paradise. “My people have committed two evils,” says the Lord Himself; “they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and they have hewn out to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns,which can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13.) And this is the reason why, when we turn to God, and would fain comfort ourselves in Him, we do not find the comfort. Our portion does not yield us for our cup. Would we wonder if we saw an Israelite returning from the worship of Baal refused acceptance at Jehovah’s altar? “Covetousness is idolatry,” says the apostle. But what is covetousness? It is just the craving of a heart unsatisfied with its portion, for which the thing sought becomes the end that governs it: their lust, as you may see in many a heathen deity, becomes their god. “Their god is their belly” -the craving part -says the apostle again, “who mind earthly things.” (Philippians 3:19.) And “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” So here the voice of our blessed Forerunner: “Thou maintainest my lot.” It is a sure abiding possession that does not leave the heart to unrest. And how blessed a portion! “The lines are fallen unto Me in pleasant places: yea, my inheritance is fair to Me.” Yet it is the Son of God down here in a fallen world, who says this: at the same time a man of sorrows because of what the world was. And for us, be the wilderness what it may, God surely is undiminished by it. Yea. in the wilderness were wrought those miracles which made God known as a living reality. Where else did the manna fall morning by morning? Not even in.

Canaan, when they entered there! And where else did the pillar of cloud and fire, changing its aspect for their need, go before them ever in the way, to find the path for them? Child of God, is it an evil path in which the Lord leads thee, and where these wonders are but signs for thee of deeper realities? 4. But the wilderness path itself is what now follows, the proving by the way: and again, how truly a man is He! “I will bless Jehovah, who has given me counsel; my reins also instruct me.” It is the same Person who speaks in the prophetic word of Isaiah: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I may know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learner.”* How real thus was His dependence, walking by the daily counsel of God, His ear early wakened to receive it! We remember how in His temptation in the wilderness, He applied to Himself the saying in Deuteronomy, that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live.” So did He live, then, even as we; only in a perfection all His own. On the one hand there was the direct guidance of the word of God; on the other, His own Spirit-led thoughts, the fruit of that Word digested and assimilated, by which all His practical life was formed. What a place with Him had the Word! “Scripture which cannot be broken,” as He said of it once in the face of unbelief. What a place should it not have with us!
This retirement with God, this meditation by night, this daily sought, daily found guidance of God, -how much of it do we really know, in days of so much outward activity as these? The sweet communing of soul with a living Counselor and Lord, how much it is to be feared that this less characterizes the Christian’s life than it did of old, -in days that we deem much darker. Yet nothing can really make up for such a deficiency. It is in secret that the roots of faith lay hold of the sustenance that can alone mature into fruit in the outward life. “The secret of the Lord,” which is “with them that fear Him,” may we not say, is imparted in secret? How much does the Lord insist upon this secret life before God in His sermon on the mount, -“before your Father who seeth in secret”? Surely, there is little of this, as there should be; and must we not fear that it is becoming less? It is literally, “my reins bind me,” -my thoughts hold me fast: those deep inner thoughts, in which what we are in inmost reality expresses itself. Do such thoughts hold us fast? And if so, what is their character? Do they speak joy or sorrow? Peace or anxiety? Of earth or of heaven? Does the Word of God blend with them in harmony, or reprove them? In that season of quiet whose continual recurrence God has ordained for us, to withdraw us from alien influences into ourselves, does the soul freely, gladly, rise to Him? Or where does it wander? Where else does it seek a more congenial companionship? Can we say, with the delight of one of old, “When I awake, I am still with Thee”? Look now at the purpose which all this implies: “I have set Jehovah always before Me.” These are the words of the same perfect Exemplar; and “he that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself to walk even as He walked.” And who can doubt how the Man Christ Jesus walked? If we have other ends before us, -money, or reputation, or a life of ease, or what not, -is not our life, in its whole principle, different from His? If it be said, we all fail, -true: but failure in the carrying out of a right principle is one thing, and having a wrong one is quite another. “I have set Jehovah before Me” expresses purpose, the choice of the heart; and He could say “always,” which we cannot. The essence of sin is, “we have turned every one to his own way”; and, if “Jehovah has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” this is not that, delivered from the curse of it, we may go on under its bondage; still less, as freely following it. No: if this be iniquity, “let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” For Him who could say, “I have set Jehovah always before Me,” what was the result? “Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” There was no tottering, no unsteadiness in His steps: no circumstances, no power of the enemy, could hinder or turn Him aside. All other aims may be defeated, all other hopes frustrated; but where God is before the soul, it can never miss its aim: this is the secret of all prosperity and success. If we have set the Lord before us, we may go forward with the fullest and most assured confidence. And this is, in fact, found in such a course. What hinders faith like a double mind? What strengthens it like a single eye?

How can we trust God for a selfish project? How doubt that He will fulfill His own mind? In the path of faith it is that we find faith for the path; and there alone. 5. And now we have the final, the eternal result. The principles of divine government secure the blessing or the curse, as the contrary goals of obedience or disobedience: and this is what Deuteronomy insists upon. For Him whom we have now before us, the government of God could have no mingled results, no doubtful or hypothetical blessing. If death were before Him, we know it as what He found simply in the path of obedience, and in love to men. From it, therefore, the Father’s glory necessitated the resurrection of His holy One: “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest secure: for Thou wilt not leave to Sheol” -hades -“my soul; Thou wilt not suffer thy Pious One* to see corruption.”
There was but One who could come up out of death upon such a ground: He who, not for His sins, but in His matchless grace, went into it. “Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him out of death, and was heard for His piety;* though He were Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; and, being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.” (Hebrews 5:7-9.) Thus as Captain of our salvation was the One always personally perfect perfected. In the psalm we do not see, indeed, this descent into death as an atoning work, but we do see it as part of a path into which His love to the saints had made Him enter. But thus we recognize it as indeed “the path of life,” trodden by Him as Forerunner and Representative of the host of His redeemed. “Thou wilt show me,” He says, “the path of life.”
The path of life is the path that leads to this: for life in its full reality can only be enjoyed where God, its Source, is. Death is separation from the source of life. When the soul departs, the body left behind is dead; for soul and life are in Scripture one. So, man departed from God -for here the departure is on the reverse side -spiritual death becomes his condition. And the world takes its character from this: it is out of correspondence with God. The breach is witnessed of through its whole frame; on account of it the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together; and we too who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we also groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption -to wit, the redemption of our body. Thus, though we have life in us, it is a life whose proper display cannot yet be. a “life hid with Christ in God,” until “Christ our life shall appear.” Meanwhile our path leads up to this: opened for us through death itself by Him who going into it has abolished it, and brought life and incorruption to light by the gospel. “In Thy presence fullness of joy.” What, indeed, to Him who says this, -the Son of the Father, in His self-assumed exile, His face now toward the glory which He had with Him before the world was! There is really no “in,” and to leave it out brings out better, perhaps, the force: “fullness of joys, Thy presence! At Thy right hand” -the place of approbation -“pleasures for evermore.” So for us the joy of heaven is defined in this: “we shall be ever with the Lord”; “where I am, there ye shall be also.” The knowledge of the Father and of Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, characterizes now for us eternal life. Life in its fullness means for us, then, this knowledge in its own proper home. “In My Father’s house are many mansions,” says our Lord to His disciples; “if it were not so, I would have told you: I go to prepare a place for you.” He would not have suffered them unwarned to have enjoyed so dear an intimacy with Himself, if eternity were not to justify and perpetuate it. And for us, every taste of communion now, every moment of enjoyed intimacy is the pledge of its renewal and perfection in the joy beyond. If it were not so, He would not permit it. The glory into which He is gone could not change the heart of Him who once left it for our sakes. The One who descended is the same also who is ascended up.

The Glorified is the Crucified. We shall see in His face above the tender lowly condescension of the days of His flesh: “we shall see Him as He is,” only to find Him as He was: nearer as better known. At His right hand, too, we shall all be; whatever special rewards there are, there will be gracious approbation for all It is sweet to know that whatever differences may obtain among us, the common joys will also be the deepest and greatest. Fruit of our own work which we may have, what can it be, compared with the fruit of His work, which we shall enjoy together? Children of God alike, the Father’s heart and home will be for all. To be members of Christ, His bride, joint-heirs with Him, will be our common portion. “Kings and priests unto His God and Father,” He has made our common privilege. There is an unhappy legal tendency to make special rewards mean what is real distortion of all this, as if some of His own, after all He has done for them, might be left in comparative distance from Him. Even the “many mansions” of the Father’s house have been made to minister to such a thought. Nothing could be less like the real purport of those blessed, assuring words, which just emphasize the room for all, the taking in of all, and for eternity.