No idea is at the first blush so definite as that of property, or at least of real property. Here is a stretch of country, accurately delimited on the ordnance map; I say of it, it is mine. I may build on it or I may till it; I may grow what I will, or what the soil allows, or I may turn it into pasture. I may sell it or give it or leave it to my heirs. So definite is the idea, that a nobleman is called after his estate—he is So-and-so of So-and-so. He belongs to the land in something of the same sense that the land belongs to him, a small human entity so identified with the big estate that he becomes great; the lord, but also the product of these thousands of acres; a man with a stake in the country, a personality realising himself in this territorial way. You look at him and you see the vast and solid domain latent in him. You find it difficult or impossible to think that he and his landless valet are in any sense equal. The valet stands for six feet of flesh and blood, and his monthly wage. The lord stands for a considerable slice of the earth's surface in fee-simple, with royalty rights over what underlies of mineral or other wealth down to the centre. It is not my desire to cast any suspicion on the value or reality of this kind of property. I do not dwell on the fact that it cannot become part of the man, nor he a part of it until he is buried in the family vault at the centre of it. I do not wish even to remember that a trifling accident to his sensitive organism puts him out of possession for ever. Rather I desire to enlarge on this perfectly definite and distinct idea, which is nowhere so absolute and unquestionable as in England. We can have no difficulty in fixing the thought of a man's estate, his property, his possessions. Now we have to transfer this clear idea to God as the inheritance or portion of the soul. "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance."
Possibly we may all have known a person, rich or poor, who has given us much the same impression of the estate in God which lies behind him as the landed proprietor gives us of his unseen spreading acres. The person may be like the poor woman who held up to Bishop Burnet the crust, exclaiming with gratitude, "All this and Christ!" Or think of David Elginbrod, or of that more real Scottish saint, the father of David Livingstone, bequeathing to his children on his deathbed no property, but the fact that in the generations of the family preserved in memory there was no dishonourable man. Such a person as I am speaking of is far more secure and serene than the owner of large estates, seems to find far more enjoyment in the beauty and interest of even this passing world, and dwells in the perpetual contemplation of an unseen domain which cannot by any possibility be taken from him. This is the person who has made the Lord his portion, and we want to realise what it is that has happened to him, the lines which have fallen to him in pleasant places. God is real to him, as landed property is to the landowner, not limited as the estate is, suggesting always a land-hunger for the fields beyond, but definite and certain. So definite and certain, that it is possible to say, "This is my God," very much as the landowner says of his estate, "This is my land."
But God presents to him also a security of salvation and of life, of progress and of joy. He finds in God a subject of endless contemplation, and a source from which he derives all things that are necessary for this world and for a world to come. God is his occupation. The will of God is his delight. The universe presents itself to him as the works of God, history as the development of a Divine thought, man as the shadow or image of God, religion as the relation between God and man, heaven as the goal of the knowledge and love which relate God to man.
If he is a thinker, like Spinoza, all things are seen in God. If he is a poet, God Himself appears the best poet, and the real is His song. If he is a man of science, he studies everything in nature, as thinking the thoughts of God after Him.
But if he is a plain man, innocent of abstract thought, none the less his business and his pleasure, his family and his friends, all present themselves as material furnished by God in which he is to work out the Divine will, and win the Divine approval. Nothing is dissociated from God, whom he recognises everywhere, and at all times. But as God who is thus all in all to him is Light and Life and Love, the problem of his own and of the world's existence is implicitly solved for him. God is all he wants, more than all in God he finds. Every question is brought up into the presence of God; in His light he sees light. Death disappears; for God is seen, the possessor of immortality, imparting life to him who possesses God. And as God is absolute love, there can be no question that all things are working together for good to those who love Him.
This sovereign presence and power of the Divine will make earthly possessions and station and success quite indifferent. They do not lose their value; but they find their value only in relation to God and His will, so that, if only a man's ways please God, and he lives in the reconciliation and obedience to the will of God, he must be sure that he has as much earthly property, as good a station, and as great a degree of success, as God thinks good for him. If all things seem taken from him, he reflects, God is my portion, and with Him I have all things. And if all things are his, he does not feel that he possesses any more than God; the things are temporary appearances within the bounds of his inheritance, which is God; they lie latent there always, appearing or disappearing as the wisdom and love of God determine.
As this portion is distinct and tangible enough, so it is obviously both larger and more satisfying than any earthly inheritance. It leaves none of the aching hunger for things beyond. It brings all things at once, and leaves to the soul the plain and endless task of developing the inexhaustible treasures that are contained in it.
But how and by whom is this portion to be obtained? In the typical arrangement of the Jewish law it fell to an order, the tribe of Levi. In the psalm it fell to one who trusted in the Lord. That furnishes the key to the new covenant, in which all that once fell to a privileged nation, or order, or office, falls to those who believe. By faith a man becomes a child of Abraham. By faith the believer becomes a priest and a king unto God. By faith the portion of this Divine inheritance is appropriated, and may be appropriated by whosoever will!
By faith, however, we are not to understand a vague and general act of the mind, which simply assumes that it has what it desires. The faith which appropriates the Divine inheritance is specific, it is faith which is in Jesus, a recognition and a reception of Christ as the Son of God entering into the sphere of human life in order to give to men God as their portion. "He that heareth My word, and believeth in Him that sent Me," said Jesus, "hath everlasting life." By faith in Jesus each of us inherits what was promised to Abraham, to Israel, to David, to Levi. Jesus has said that He will not cast out any that come to Him; and that who comes to Him comes to God. Now it is certainly remarkable—considering the universal desire for property, for real property, for lasting and inalienable property, and considering the definiteness and certainty of the possession of God, and the universality of the offer to every human being—that comparatively few persons exert themselves to become possessed of God, or bestow anything like the same energy and eagerness of endeavour on securing God as their portion which men show in the acquisition of a great earthly property. It is this remarkable fact to which Jesus alludes when He says that many are called but few are chosen, or that many walk in the broad way which leads to destruction, but few will come to Him that He may give them life.
