Joint-Heirs with Christ

If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him.—Romans 8:17.

“The eighth chapter of Romans,” says Spurgeon, “is like the garden of Eden, full of all manner of delights. Here you have all necessary doctrines to feed upon, and luxurious truths with which to satisfy your soul. One might well have been willing to be shut up as a prisoner in Paradise; and one might well be content to be shut up to this one chapter, and never to be allowed to preach from any other part of God’s Word. If this were the case, one might find a sermon in every line; nay, more than that, whole volumes might be found in a single sentence by any one who was truly taught of God. I might say of this chapter, ‘All its paths drop fatness.’ It is among the other chapters of the Bible like Benjamin’s mess, which was five times as much as that of any of his brothers. We must not exalt one part of God’s Word above another; yet, as ‘one star differeth from another star in glory,’ this one seems to be a star of the first magnitude, full of the brightness of the grace and truth of God. It is an altogether inexhaustible mine of spiritual wealth, and I invite the saints of God to dig in it, and to dig in it again and again. They will find, not only that it hath dust of gold, but also huge nuggets, which they shall not be able to carry away by reason of the weight of the treasure.”

The subject of this verse of the chapter is the Inheritance of the children of God.

I.  The Inheritance belongs to the Children.

  II.  The Inheritance is God.

  III.  It is a Joint-Inheritance with Christ.

  IV.  The condition of enjoying it is that we suffer with Christ.

I

The Inheritance belongs to the Children

“If children, then heirs.”

1. It is children of God who are heirs of God. It is by union with Christ Jesus, the Son, to whom the inheritance belongs, that they who believe on His name receive power to become the sons of God, and with that power the possession of the inheritance.

2. What, then, are the marks of sonship?

(1) If we are sons of God, we shall know it partly by the indwelling of the Spirit, as Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father”; and in the verse before our text we read, “The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God.”

(2) The children of God have another mark by which they can be recognized, namely, that there is a likeness in them to their Heavenly Father. If a man says to you, “I am the son of So-and-so,”—some old friend of yours,—you look into his face to see whether you can trace any likeness to his father. So, when a man says, “I am a child of God,” we have the right to expect that there shall be at least some trace of the character of God visible in his walk and conversation.

(3) But the chief evidence of our being children of God lies in our believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” There are many evidences of the life of God in the soul, but there is no other that is so abiding as the possession of faith in Jesus Christ.

It is not easy to imagine a more cautious, lawyer-like record than that of Lord Eldon: “I was born, I believe, on the 4th of June 1751.” We may suppose that this hesitating statement refers to the date, and not to the fact, of his birth. Many, however, are just as uncertain about their spiritual birth. It is a grand thing to be able to say, “We have passed from death unto life,” even though we may not be able to post a date to it.

3. The Inheritance belongs to all God’s children. It does not always follow in human reckoning, “if children, then heirs,” because in our families but one is the heir. There is but one that can claim the heir’s rights, and the heir’s title. It is not so in the family of God. Man, as a necessary piece of political policy, may give to the heir that which surely he can have no more real right to, in the sight of God, than the rest of the family—may give him all the inheritance, while his brethren, equally true-born, may go without; but it is not so in the family of God. All God’s children are heirs, however numerous the family, and he that shall be born of God last shall be as much His heir as he who was born first. Abel, the protomartyr, entering alone into heaven, shall not have a more secure title to the inheritance than he who, last of woman born, shall trust in Christ, and then ascend into His glory.

II

The Inheritance is God

“Heirs of God.”

1. God Himself is His greatest gift. The loftiest blessing which we can receive is that we should be heirs, possessors of God. There is a sublime and wonderful mutual possession spoken of in Scripture: the Lord is the inheritance of Israel, and Israel is the inheritance of the Lord. “The Lord hath taken you to be to him a people of inheritance,” says Moses: “Ye are a people for a possession,” says Peter. And, on the other hand, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance,” says David: “Ye are the heirs of God,” echoes Paul. On earth and in heaven the heritage of the children of the Lord is God Himself. He is in them to make them “partakers of the Divine nature,” and for them in all His attributes and actions.

2. “Heirs of God”—can we enumerate some of the parts of our inheritance?

(1) The children of God are heirs of God’s Promises. If you turn to the 1st chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the 14th verse, you will find that we are there called “heirs of salvation.” Looking on a little further in the same Epistle, in the 6th chapter, and the 17th verse, you will find that we are called “the heirs of promise.” In his Epistle to Titus, the 3rd chapter, and the 7th verse, Paul calls us “heirs according to the hope of eternal life”; while James says, in the 2nd chapter of his Epistle, at the 5th verse, that we are “heirs of the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love him”; and Peter says, in his First Epistle, the 3rd chapter, and 7th verse, that we are “heirs together of the grace of life.”

The promises of men are often lightly given. “A canvassing party,” says Sir Wilfrid Lawson, “went to the house of an elector in Manchester, but only his wife was at home. They explained to her what they had come for, and on leaving said: ‘You know what we want, we want your husband’s vote for Mr. ——; do you think he’ll promise?’ ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I think he’ll promise, he’s promised every one who came yet.’ ”1 [Note: G. W. E. Russell’s Memoir of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 97.] God promises nothing but what He knows He can perform, nothing but what He means to perform.

A living, loving, lasting word,

My listening ear believing heard,

While bending down in prayer;

Like a sweet breeze that none can stay,

It passed my soul upon its way,

And left a blessing there.

Then joyful thoughts that come and go,

By paths the holy angels know,

Encamped around my soul;

As in a dream of blest repose,

’Mid withered reeds a river rose,

And through the desert stole.

I lifted up my eyes to see—

The wilderness was glad for me,

Its thorns were bright with bloom;

And onward travellers, still in sight,

Marked out a path of shining light

And shade unmixed with gloom.

Oh, sweet the strains of those before,

The weary knees are weak no more,

The faithful heart is strong.

But sweeter, nearer, from above,

That word of everlasting love,

The promise and the Song of Solomon 1 [Note: A. L. Waring.]

(2) We are heirs of God’s Possessions. When God gives Himself to us, He gives us with Himself all that He has. And this means treasures vast and immeasurable. The stars in their glittering splendour are the dust of His feet. The kingdoms of the world are to Him the small dust of the balance. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul says: “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.”

I stood one time with a big-hearted friend of mine who has been for twenty years minister of a small church in a humble community where most of the people were fisher-folk winning their livelihood from the sea. The veranda of this man’s humble home overlooked the harbour and the ocean beyond. It was evening, and the lights were appearing one by one on the fleet of boats in the harbour. We had been speaking about the city, with its advantages and its enticements. My friend had grown meditative, and was evidently thinking of what he had missed in these twenty years of isolation. He said, “Sometimes I think I ought to go away from here—ought to have gone years ago. I should probably be more of a man if I had.” And then with an impulsive and indescribable gesture he stretched his hands out as if to embrace the harbour and the ocean itself, and said, “That compensates for all.” For a moment he made me feel my own poverty. He owned the ocean because he loved it.2 [Note: F. O. Hall.]

(3) We are heirs of God’s Attributes. Is He omnipotent? His omnipotence is ours, to be our defence. Is He omniscient? His infinite wisdom is ours, to guide us. Is He eternal? His eternity is ours, that we may ever be preserved. Is He full of love and grace? Then all His love, as though there were not another to be loved, is mine, and all His grace, as though there were never another sinner to partake of it, is mine. “The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup.” “God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.”

My eyes for beauty pine,

My soul for Goddës grace:

No other care nor hope is mine;

To heaven I turn my face.

One splendour thence is shed

From all the stars above:

’Tis namèd where God’s name is said,

’Tis Love, ’tis heavenly Love.

And every gentle heart,

That burns with true desire,

Is lit from eyes that mirror part

Of that celestial fire.1 [Note: Robert Bridges.]

3. But if the Inheritance which is God—God in all His promises, possessions, attributes—God Himself, is ours, when may we enter upon it? In its fulness, in the supremacy of its bliss, we must wait till the suffering is ended. But in some measure we may enter into possession here and now.

Our estates are not all beyond the river we call death. That is where we make an impoverishing mistake. We are heirs not only of “great expectations” but of great possessions. Superlatively rich are our expectations, but we have more than a competency by the way. Devonshire is a peculiarly rich and fruitful county, but it overflows into Somersetshire, and we are in the enjoyment of some of the glory before we reach the coveted spot. And so it is of heaven and ultimate glory.

There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign;

Infinite day excludes the night,

And pleasures banish pain.

But the glory overflows! There is something of the coveted country even in the highway of time—

The hill of Zion yields

A thousand sacred sweets,

Before we reach the heavenly fields

Or walk the golden streets.2 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

III

It is a Joint-Inheritance

“Joint-heirs with Christ.”

The proper possessor of the Inheritance indeed is “the Son of God,” the only-begotten of the Father. But His brethren are to share in it. All that glory, therefore, which the Lord had in enjoyment with the Father as His well-beloved Son before the Incarnation, together with whatever added glory the Incarnation and Atonement brought Him—all is to be shared with His brethren. He is the First-born, but He is the First-born among many brethren.

1. He cannot possibly be heir alone; for union with Christ is the very reason why we are heirs of God, and union with Christ must for us also culminate in glory. It is not merely because the joy hereafter seems required in order to vindicate God’s love to His children, who here reap sorrow from their sonship, that the discipline of life cannot but end in blessedness. That ground of mere compensation is a low one on which to rest the certainty of future bliss. But the inheritance is sure to all who here suffer with Christ, because the one cause—union with the Lord—produces both the present result of fellowship in His sorrows and the future result of joy in His joy, of possession of His possessions. The inheritance is sure because Christ possesses it now.

Our right to it stands or falls with Christ’s right to the same inheritance. We are co-heirs; if He be truly an heir, so are we; and if He be not, neither are we. Our two interests are intertwined and made one, we have neither of us any heirship apart from the other; we are joint-heirs, Christ jointly with us, ourselves jointly with Christ. So, then, it follows that if there be any flaw in the will, so that it be not valid, if it be not rightly signed, sealed, and delivered, then it is no more valid for Christ than it is for us. If we get nothing, Christ gets nothing; if there should be no heaven for us, there is no heaven for Christ. If there should be no throne for us, there would be no throne for Him; if the promise should utterly fail of fulfilment to the least of the joint-heritors, it must also fail of accomplishment to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

2. And this lets us see how great the inheritance is. For if we are to be joint-heirs with Christ, it cannot be a little thing that we are to share with Him. Can you imagine what the Father would give to His Son as the reward of the travail of His soul? Give yourself time to think what the everlasting God would give to His equal Son, who took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and who humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Can you think of a reward that would be large enough for Him? Let the Father’s love and the Father’s justice judge.

IV

The Condition

“If so be that we suffer with him.”

1. One condition of heirship the Apostle has stated already—that we be children of God. Is this another? It is not another in the same indispensable way. The one is the indispensable condition of all; the other is but the means for the operation of the condition. The one—being sons, “joint-heirs with Christ”—is the root of the whole matter; the other—the “suffering with him”—is but the various process by which from the root there come “the blade, and the ear, and the full corn in the ear.” Given the sonship—if it is to be worked out into power and beauty, there must be suffering with Christ. But unless there be sonship, there is no possibility of inheriting God; discipline and suffering will be of no use at all.

2. Nor does the Apostle mean to tell us that if there were such a case as that of a man becoming a son of God, and having no occasion or opportunity afterwards, by brevity of life or other causes, for passing through the discipline of sorrow, his inheritance would be forfeited. We must always take such passages as this, which seem to make the discipline of the world an essential part of the preparing of us for glory, in conjunction with the other undeniable truth which completes them, that when a man has the love of God in his heart, however feebly, however newly, there and then he is fit for the inheritance.

3. Yet the condition is there—“if so be that we suffer with him.” And how can it be otherwise? Is not the whole secret of the inheritance that we be united to Christ—that it is a Joint inheritance? And when were ever two hearts united here that the union did not bring with it pain? It cannot be otherwise, and it has never been. “Let love clasp grief, lest both be drowned.”

A blue bird built his nest

Here in my breast.

O bird of Light! Whence comest thou?

Said he: From God above:

My name is Love.

A mate he brought one day,

Of plumage gray.

O bird of Night! Why comest thou?

Said she: Seek no relief!

My name is Grief.1 [Note: Laurence Alma Tadema.]

i. Christ’s Suffering

1. Christ’s suffering is in one sense solitary. It stands as a thing by itself and unapproachable, a solitary pillar rising up, above the waste of time, to which all men everywhere are to turn with the one thought, “I can do nothing like that; I need to do nothing like it; it has been done once, and once for all; and what I have to do is simply to lie down before Him, and let the power and the blessings of that death and those sufferings flow into my heart.” The Divine Redeemer makes eternal redemption. The sufferings of Christ—the sufferings of His life and the sufferings of His death—both because of the nature which bore them and of the aspect which they wore in regard to us, are in their source, in their intensity, and in their character, and consequences, unapproachable, incapable of repetition, and needing no repetition whilst the world shall stand.

2. But Christ’s sufferings may in another sense be shared by us. The very books and writers in the New Testament that preach most broadly Christ’s sole, all-sufficient, eternal redemption for the world by His sufferings and death, turn round and say to us too, “Be planted together in the likeness of his death”; you are “crucified to the world” by the Cross of Christ; you are to “fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ.” He Himself speaks of our drinking of the cup that He drank of, and being baptized with the baptism that He was baptized with, if we desire to sit yonder on His throne, and share with Him in His glory.

3. All the suffering that came upon Christ came out of one of two roots—the root of obedience or the root of sympathy.

(1) Obedience. He went out on behalf of the word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness. He bore witness to the supernatural truth of His mission before the Sadducees. “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, neither the power of God.” He bore witness to the deep, vital, progressive righteousness which had found utterance in the older prophets, but full expression through the lips of the Son of Man. Before the face of the Pharisees He bore witness to the word of truth and righteousness linked by meekness. Again and again the people at large would have come and made Him a King. But the bruised reed would He not break, and the smoking flax would He not quench, nor would He cry nor cause His voice to be heard in the street; He bore witness to the word of truth and righteousness. All indignation, all opposition, all rejection, even death, came simply out of that obedience to the uttermost of His mission.

(2) Sympathy. His pain came also from deliberate sympathy. Our Lord describes the life of the selfish: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.” Look at the grain of corn. It is the very symbol of a selfish life. There it is, a beautiful thing in its golden integument; but for ever, in its beauty, barren. It must give itself up to let the moisture of the ground rot that integument of its selfish life; for only in abandoning itself can the vital principle be made to germinate within it and bring forth fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. So our Lord lays before us the principle of the selfish life which He, in His own example, utterly abandons. He hid not Himself from His own flesh; He would not use the supernatural or natural powers of His position to secure advantages to Himself. He simply went out, a man among men. He bore their sicknesses and carried their sorrows.1 [Note: Bishop Gore.]

There is a great word used of Jesus, and by Him, nine times in the Gospels, the word compassion. The sight of a leprous man, or of a demon-distressed man, moved Him. The great multitudes huddling together after Him, so pathetically, like leaderless sheep, eager, hungry, tired, always stirred Him to the depths. The lone woman, bleeding her heart out through her eyes, as she followed the body of her boy out—He could not stand that at all. And when He was so moved, He always did something. He clean forgot His own bodily needs, so absorbed did He become in the folks around Him. The healing touch was quickly given, the demonized man released from his sore bonds, the disciples organized for a wider movement to help, the bread multiplied so that the crowds could find something comforting between their hunger-cleaned teeth. The sight of suffering always stirred Him. The presence of a crowd seemed always to touch and arouse Him peculiarly. He never learned that sort of city culture that can look unmoved upon suffering or upon a leaderless, helpless crowd. That word compassion, used of Him, is both deep and tender in its meaning. The word, actually used under our English, means to have the bowels or heart, the seat of emotion, greatly stirred.2 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 103.]

ii. Our Suffering

1. If a Christian has the Spirit and life of Christ in him, his career will be moulded, imperfectly but really, by the same Spirit that dwelt in his Lord; and similar causes will produce corresponding effects. The life of Christ which—Divine, pure, incapable of copy and repetition—in one aspect has ended for ever for men, remains to be lived, in another view of it, by every Christian, who in like manner has to fight with the world; who in like manner has to resist temptation; who in like manner has to stand, by God’s help, pure and sinless, in so far as the new nature of him is concerned, in the midst of a world that is full of evil.

2. It is not meant that we are to go about seeking pain. It is not meant that we are to refuse the healthy joys that life offers us. It is not meant that we should be morbid and sentimental. It is meant that we should set ourselves to follow, deliberately and really, if imperfectly, the principles of our Lord’s living.

3. Of what nature, then, are the things which we have to suffer with Christ if we are to be glorified with Him?

(1) Trial. Let us learn to look upon all trial as being at once the seal of our sonship, and the means by which God puts it within our power to win a higher place, a loftier throne, a nobler crown, a closer fellowship with Him “who hath suffered, being tempted,” and who will receive into His own blessedness and rest them that are tempted. “The child, though he be an heir, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors.” God puts us here in the school of sorrow under that stern tutor and governor, and gives us the opportunity of “suffering with Christ,” that by the daily crucifixion of our old nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamities and change, there may grow up in us a still nobler, purer, and more perfect Divine life; and that we may so be made capable—more capable, and capable of more—of that inheritance for which the only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness is faith in His name.

Amidst the eternal illusion that envelops us one thing is certain—suffering. It is the corner-stone of life. On it humanity is founded as on a firm rock. Outside it all is uncertainty. It is the sole evidence of a reality that escapes us. We know that we suffer, and we know nothing else. This is the base on which man has built everything. Yes, it is on the parched granite of pain that man has firmly established love and courage, heroism and pity, the choir of august laws and the procession of terrible or delightful virtues. If that foundation failed them, those noble figures would all crash together into the abyss of nothingness. Humanity has an obscure consciousness of the necessity of pain. It has placed pious sorrow among the virtues of the saints. Blessed are those that suffer, and woe to the fortunate! Because it uttered that cry the Gospel has reigned over the world for two thousand years.1 [Note: Anatole France, On Life and Letters, 294.]

Do you remember a picture at Milan in which there is a little cherub trying to feel one of the points of the crown of thorns with his little first finger? It seemed to me a true thought.2 [Note: R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 3.]

(2) The Opposition of the World. Part of Christ’s sufferings sprang from the contact of the sinless Son of Man with a sinful world, and the apparently vain attempt to influence and leaven that sinful world with care for itself and love for the Father. If there had been nothing more than that, yet Christ’s sufferings as the Son of God in the midst of sinful men would have been deep and real. “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” was wrung from Him by the painful sense of want of sympathy between His aims and theirs. “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then I would fly away and be at rest,” must often be the language of those who are like Him in spirit, and in consequent sufferings.

If we are living in oneness of spirit with our Lord, the same thing will sadden us that saddened Him—the world’s unbelief and sin, its cold contempt of God, its hard rebellion against His law, its proud rejection of His love. To share in His mission to the world will inevitably make us sharers in His trials and sufferings as we carry it on. We shall need to bear reproach as He did, to be evil-spoken-of as He was, to be shunned and stigmatized for the same faithfulness to God that drew down on Him the enmity of men. The more perfectly we resemble Him, the more of this we shall have to endure; indeed, the measure in which we suffer it will often be an accurate measurement of the extent of our resemblance to our Lord.1 [Note: G. H. Knight.]

(3) Pity. Christ went out into the world in the spirit of sympathy with, and compassion for, the common weaknesses and infirmities and sins of men. We can share in the suffering which His pity brought Him. “Hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” We may clutch at the advantage of our worldly position to screen ourselves as much as ever we can from fellowship in the pains which the great mass of men have to share. “Hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” Have some contact with the suffering, and not in a general and vague philanthropy merely, but a real, actual sympathy with some suffering men or women. Have your own burden well in hand, well borne, so that you can lay open the spaces of your heart, and give some of your vacant time really to bear the burdens of others. There are some weaker than you in your office or round about you in your society, some poorer than you, some struggling with great difficulties or great temptations. Be at pains with a manly and intelligent sympathy to understand their difficulties, so that as you are walking on you may feel that you have been able to tide over the rough waters of this life some one or other whose case you really know; that you have been able to help through the moral difficulties and temptations all around some one whom you are drawing with you nearer to God.1 [Note: Bishop Gore.]

(4) Sin. One part of the sufferings of Christ is to be found in that deep and mysterious fact on which one durst not venture to speak beyond what the actual words of Scripture put into one’s lips—the fact that Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation. There was no sin within Him, no tendency to sin, no yielding to the evil that assailed. “The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” But yet, when that dark Power stood by His side, and said, “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down,” it was a real temptation, and not a sham one. There was no wish to do it, no faltering for a moment, no hesitation. There was no rising up in that calm will of even a moment’s impulse to do the thing that was presented;—but yet it was presented, and when Christ triumphed, and the Tempter departed for a season, there had been a temptation and there had been a conflict. And though obedience be a joy, and the doing of His Father’s will was His delight, as it must needs be in pure and purified hearts; yet obedience which is sustained in the face of temptation, and which never fails, though its path lead to bodily pains and the “contradiction of sinners,” may well be called suffering.

4. Now there is one very comforting fact which we must take into account in all our thought of this mysterious subject. If we participate in the sufferings of Christ, if His death is reproduced and perpetuated, as it were, in our daily mortifying ourselves in the present evil world, Christ is with us in our afflictions. We need not hold that there is no reference here to that comforting thought, “In all our affliction he is afflicted.”

They tell us that in some trackless lands, when one friend passes through the pathless forests, he breaks a twig ever and anon as he goes, that those who come after may see the traces of his having been there, and may know that they are not out of the road. And when we are journeying through the murky night, and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed, and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrances and hidden strengths in the remembrance of Him as “in all points tempted like as we are,” bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

5. We must not keep this thought of Christ’s companionship in sorrow for the larger trials of life. If the mote in the eye be large enough to annoy us, it is large enough to bring out His sympathy; and if the grief be too small for Him to compassionate and share, it is too small for us to be troubled by it. Let us never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought that Christ is willing to hear, and help us to bear, the pettiest, the minutest, and most insignificant of the daily annoyances that may come to ruffle us. Whether it be poison from one serpent sting, or whether it be poison from a million of buzzing tiny mosquitoes, if we go to Him He will help us to endure it. He will do more, He will bear it with us; for if so be that we suffer with Him, He suffers with us, and our oneness with Christ brings about a community of possessions whereby it becomes true of each trusting soul in its relations to Him, that “all mine (joys and sorrows alike) are thine, and all thine are mine.”

I could have sung as sweet as any lark

Who in unfettered skies doth find him blest,

And sings to leaning angels prayer and praise,

For in God’s garden the most lowly nest.

But came the cares—a grey and stinging throng

Of Lilliputian foes, whose thrust and dart

Did blind my eyes and hush my song in tears;

Their brushing wings flung poison to my heart.

I could have fought, in truth, a goodly fight,

Braved death, nor feared defeat before one foe;

Against these puny cares I strive in vain,

They sting my soul unto its overthrow.2 [Note: Dora Sigerson Shorter.]

Joint-Heirs with Christ

Literature

Hall (F. O.), Soul and Body, 135.

Johnstone (V. L.), Sonship, 29.

Knight (G. H.), Divine Upliftings, 75.

Landels (W.), Until the Day Break, 86.

Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, i. 81.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, iii. 209, 329; vi. 113; viii. 313.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vi. No. 339; vii. No. 402; li. No. 2961; lvi. No. 3198.

Vaughan (J. S.), Earth to Heaven, 115.

Wilberforce (B.), Sanctification by the Truth, 119.

American Pulpit of the Day, iii. 366 (Perinchief).

Christian World Pulpit, lvi. 54 (Glover).

Clergyman’s Magazine, 3rd Series, xiv. 77 (Burrows).

Homiletic Review, lvi. 147 (Lee), 380 (Jones).