Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. CHRISTIANS—THE HERITAGE OF GOD. The Lord? s portion is his people.—Deut. xxxii. 9. THIS is said primarily of the Jews. God selected them out of all nations, and subjected them to peculiar discipline, and designed them for special ends. But th6 declaration is equally true— perhaps more true—of His people now—allied to Him by spiritual affinities—all of them sharing His nature, and seeking His glory. He has the world before Him out of which to choose, and He selects them. He says, " I will set apart these for myself, on these will I put my seal; these shall be mine. The Lord's portion is His people." He has made the world, and put into it all that we find. He has crowded it with living beings, and furnished it with intelligent, moral creatures. He has a special interest in this world. He does not mean to give it up to His enemies, or to take its chance. He superintends it. He is at work in it, and means to have, speaking after the manner of man, his pay out of it, for all the thought, and work, andsuffering He has bestowed on it. He means out of this immense tumult and struggle of time, out of the changes and revolutions of earth, to extract some result that shall be worthy of it all,—some portion that will satisfy Him, and permit Him to feel, when the drama of Time is closed up, that this globe has not swung in its orbit in vain. He means to secure some precious treasures that will meet the wishes and expectations of all orders of holy beings, and enable them to feel that the creation of this world was not a mistake, and its equipment and supervision a total Now what is it that God intends to get out of this world—putting all time, and all beings and things into a vast crucible ? What is the final result, the residuum that He expects and will have, that will make ...