Power is the informing life of both? If we are the Lord's, we possess
the kingdom of heaven, and so inherit the earth. How many who call
themselves by his name, would have it otherwise: they would possess the
earth and inherit the kingdom! Such fill churches and chapels on
Sundays: anywhere suits for the worship of Mammon.

Yet verily, earth as well as heaven may be largely possessed even now.

Two men are walking abroad together; to the one, the world yields
thought after thought of delight; he sees heaven and earth embrace one
another; he feels an indescribable presence over and in them; his joy
will afterward, in the solitude of his chamber, break forth in song;--to
the other, oppressed with the thought of his poverty, or ruminating how
to make much into more, the glory of the Lord is but a warm summer day;
it enters in at no window of his soul; it offers him no gift; for, in
the very temple of God, he looks for no God in it. Nor must there needs
be two men to think and feel thus differently. In what diverse fashion
will any one _subject_ to ever-changing mood see the same world of the
same glad creator! Alas for men, if it changed as we change, if it grew
meaningless when we grow faithless! Thought for a morrow that may never
come, dread of the dividing death which works for endless companionship,
anger with one we love, will cloud the radiant morning, and make the day
dark with night. At evening, having bethought ourselves, and returned to
him that feeds the ravens, and watches the dying sparrow, and says to
his children 'Love one another,' the sunset splendour is glad over us,
the western sky is refulgent as the court of the Father when the glad
news is spread abroad that a sinner has repented. We have mourned in the
twilight of our little faith, but, having sent away our sin, the glory
of God's heaven over his darkening earth has comforted us.