II. Now let me turn to the next point that is here, viz. that this
possession is as sure as God can make it. 'Thou maintainest my lot.'
Thou art Thyself both my heritage and the guardian of my heritage. He
that possesses God, says the text, by implication, is lifted above all
fear and chance of change.

The land, the partition of which amongst the tribes lies at the bottom
of the allusive metaphor of my text, was given to them under the
sanction of a supernatural defence; and the law of their continuance in
it was that they should trust and serve the unseen King. It was He,
according to the theocratic theory of the Old Testament, and not
chariots and horses, their own arm and their own sword, that kept them
safe, though the enemies on the north and the enemies on the south were
big enough to swallow up the little kingdom at a mouthful.

And so, says the Psalmist allusively, in a similar manner, the Divine
Power surrounds the man who chooses God for his heritage, and nothing
shall take that heritage from him.

The lower forms of possession, by which men are called the owners of
material goods, are imperfect, because they are all precarious and
temporary. Nothing really belongs to a man if it can be taken from him.
What we may lose we can scarcely be said to have. They _are_ mine, they
_were_ yours, they _will be_ somebody else's to-morrow. Whilst we have
them we do not have them in any deep sense; we cannot retain them, they
are not really ours at all. The only thing that is worth calling mine is
something that so passes into and saturates the very substance of my
soul that, like a piece of cloth dyed in the grain, as long as two
threads hold together the tint will be there. That is how God gives us