You may say we get pardon, purity, hope, joy, the prospect of Heaven,
power for service; all these and a hundred more designations by which
we might describe the one gift. All these are but the consequences of
our having got the Christ within our hearts. He does not give pardon
and the rest, as a king might give pardon and honours, a thousand
miles off, bestowing it by a mere word, upon some criminal, but He
gives all that He gives because He gives Himself. The real possession
that we receive is neither more nor less than a loving Saviour, to
enter our spirits and abide there, and be the spirit of our spirits,
and the life of our lives.

Then, notice the universality of this possession. John has said, in
the previous words, '_We_ beheld His glory.' He refers there, of
course, to the comparatively small circle of the eye-witnesses of our
Master's life; who, at the time when he wrote, must have been very,
very few in number. They had had the prerogative of seeing with their
eyes and handling with their hands the Word of life that 'was
manifested unto us'; and with that prerogative the duty of bearing
witness of Him to the rest of men. But in the 'receiving,' John
associates with himself, and with the other eyewitnesses, all those
who had listened to their word, and had received the truth in the love
of it. '_We beheld' refers to the narrower circle; 'we _all_ received'
to the wider sweep of the whole Church. There is no exclusive class,
no special prerogative. Every Christian man, the weakest, the
lowliest, the most uncultured, rude, ignorant, foolish, the most
besotted in the past, who has wandered furthest away from the Master;
whose spirit has been most destitute of all sparks of goodness and of
God--receives from out of His fulness. 'If any man have not the Spirit
of Christ he is none of His.' And every one of us, if we will, may
have dwelling in our hearts, in the greatness of His strength, in the