looks upon the men that love Him as His jewels, and, having got the
jewels, the rock in which they were embedded and preserved may be
crushed when you like. 'They shall be Mine,' saith the Lord, 'My
treasures in that day of judgment which I make.'

And so, my brother, all the insignificance of man, as compared with the
magnitude and duration of the universe, need not stagger our faith that
the divinest thing in the universe is a heart that has learnt to love
God and aspires after Him, and should but increase our wonder and our
gratitude that He has been mindful of man and has visited him, in order
that He might give Himself to men, and so might win men for Himself.

II. That brings me, and very briefly, to the other points that I desire
to deal with now. The second one, which is suggested to us from my
second text in the Epistle to Titus, is that this possession, by God,
of man, like man's possession of God, comes because God has given
Himself to man.

The Apostle puts it very strongly in the Epistle to Titus: 'The
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who
gave Himself for us that He might purify unto Himself _a people for a
possession_.' Israel, according to one metaphor, was God's 'son,'
begotten by that great redeeming act of deliverance from the captivity
of Egypt (Deut. xxxii. 6-19). According to another metaphor, Israel was
God's bride, wooed and won for His own by that same act. Both of these
figures point to the thought that in order to get man for His own He
has to give Himself to man.

And the very height and sublimity of that truth is found in the
Christian fact which the Apostle points to here. We need not depart