"O God, thou art my God." You know the meaning of these two letters "my !" When you go home, and look at your slumbering babe, you say, "my babe;" you alone can say it-no one else can say it. When,

as a merchant, you see your house of business, you say, "my house." I wonder is there one here saying, with the poet

"When I can say my God is mine,

When I can feel His glory shine,
I'll tread the world beneath my feet,
And all that earth calls good or great."

I will tell you how HE is MY God; and if you want Him as yours you can have Him. I settle it thus, in very easy logic. God has said, He is the God of the sinner. I am a sinner, He gives Himself to such, I accept Him, and He is mine. If I saw Lord Carlisle's carriage, and all his state retinue, passing through Dame Street to-morrow, and you asked me whose it was, I would say it was His Excellency's carriage; but I could not say it is my carriage. But if his Excellency gave it to me, I could then say, "it is mine." If you ask me, as Gabriel, about God, why, I would say, "that is God, the Creator, the Preserver of the universe;" but if you ask me as a sinner, I should say, sinner, I should say, "He is MY Saviour-God." I have a portion higher than angels; I am a son,-if a son, an heir of God, and joint-heir with Christ. And this last link is the wondrous link that links me to my portion. Mark the words-" heirs WITH CHRIST." He is Head and Heir of all things. And we who are associated with Him, having been united as members to the Head by the one Spirit, are to inherit with Him. And God, as His God and Father, hath given us of His love as He hath given Him. What a portion is this! "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them." What manner of love is this! how wondrous! and how great!-an ocean of love! Alas! my tongue is clay,

and my words are air, so that I feel utterly powerless in the attempt to tell you what the sinner has when he has God. But I repeat it-the way I get God is this!-God is for the sinner, God gives His Son, who died for the sinner; I am a sinner, and as a sinner I embrace His Son, and say,

"Both mine arms are clasp'd around Thee,

And my head is on thy breast;

For this weary soul hath found Thee,

Such a perfect, perfect rest."

And His Son brings me, in union with Himself, into God. Thus God is my portion, and I can say—“ O God, thou art my God!"

Turn with me, in the second place, to the divine yearning:- "Early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.'

Let me premise for a moment, that this longing desire after God is that which distinguishes those who have God from those who have Him not; it distinguishes the sinner from the saint. The unsaved man, in his natural condition, has no desire after God, no longing for God; as the poet sings :

"Fools never raise their thoughts so high;

Like brutes they live, like brutes they die."

This is, indeed, for saint and sinner, a two-edged sword; but it cuts by the Spirit only to heal. The natural heart hates God, the natural heart dislikes God; and none but a man whom God has touched can

long for God. Then do you not see where you are landed? You say, "God is dealing with me, for of all things I do want God, I long for God;" you say, "The language you have uttered is exactly my language:"

"When I can say my God is mine,
When I can feel His glory shine,
I'll tread the world beneath my feet,
And all this earth calls good or great."

Ah! how one loves to comfort the poor awakened soul! There may be one here this morning, writing bitter things against himself; he may be saying, "Alas, for me! I have nothing, I am not a believer, I am not happy; if I were to die there would be no heaven for me; I am not at peace with God." You are saying, "Oh, that I had God! When shall I say, 'O God, Thou art my God.""

I do not hesitate to pronounce it on you this morning, that you have so far got God—that you have so far been under the powerful operation of God Himself. For, "it is God that quickeneth! it is God that maketh alive!" No dead soul ever longed after God. Oh, clap your hands, poor seeking ones; or, rather, hark to the triumphant songs in heaven, where they are saying, "Here is a brother who was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." Speak we of souls in pangsseeking after God-of crying out, "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee!" I could tell you, beloved friends, where this has been literally true. I have seen men and women as if going into actual consumption, with heart and flesh failing them, because they had not God. I have seen them with their very countenances waxing wan and death-like, because they had not known God. And yet how God wants such. God draws such to Himself. God wants you to have Him by believing. God says you may have Him by believing His own word. Truly it is a blessed thing to be longing for God, and saying, "My soul thirsteth for thee, and my flesh longeth for thee.'

Let me ask thee, and do thou answer me, anxious sinner, Who planted that longing in thy soul for God? Tell me, beloved, who it was that gave thee thy inward thirsting after God? It does not come of nature-it does not come of the devil-it does not come of the world-it comes of GOD. I will linger here a little that I may comfort you, O man! Ŏ woman!

you who have been seeking God. It is not so much you who have been seeking God, as it is God who has been seeking you—

"As rivers to the ocean run,

Nor stay in all their course;
As fire ascending seeks the sun—
Both speed them to their source;
So a soul that's born of God,

Pants to view his Father's face,
Upward tends to His abode,

To rest in His embrace."

May my God comfort you with this thought, that if you are longing for God-longing for salvationlonging after heaven, it is GOD who is quickening you -it is God working with and in you. "It is God that quickeneth, it is God that maketh alive." But I tarry not here.

For

Go with me now to the-Blessed memories. we have here blessed memories. Says the Psalmist, "To see thy power and thy glory, so as we have seen thee in the sanctuary." If the memories, beloved, were, in the first instance, the memories of David, then we can understand something of his condition; for, when far away in the desert, what was it he longed for ? Not to have his royal crown or equipage restored to him; not to be placed at the head of his armies again. How beautiful! for what he did say was"To see," not them, but "thy power and thy glory."

Or if the language be, as some suppose, the language of the Jewish remnant, still you can understand it. You remember how glory has been connected with Israel from the very first. You remember how Stephen said, "The God OF GLORY appeared to Abraham.” Why did the God of GLORY appear to him? God came to Abraham, and said, "Abraham, get out of thy country and thy kindred." Said Abraham to God, "Am I to leave them." "Yes." And what enabled Abraham to get out of them? It was the God of

glory-the glory of God-it was something that drew him, that attracted him, so that he could go out on a long pilgrimage, and look for a country out of sight, belonging to the God of glory." You understand me, beloved friends, when God meets with the sinner, He comes to him, and presents Christ to him, and Christ, "the hope of glory," is revealed to him.

You remember when the tabernacle was set up, Israel saw the visible glory between the cherubim, there the shekinah sent down its mystic beams of glory; and the blood was on and before the mercyseat, and the shekinah shed down its glorious beams on the drops of blood, which blood showed that God required death, and also that death had transpired, and that God could receive the sinner in virtue of that blood.

And then, when Solomon's temple was opened, the priests could not go in, because of the excess of the glory; they had to cover their faces. And Moses, when on the Mount, received the glory on his countenance, so vast was it that he had to put a veil on him. Israel had long been accustomed to "glory;" and we can imagine Israel saying, in the latter days, "We will seek thee early; our soul thirsteth for thee, our flesh longeth for thee; for we would see thy power and thy glory, so as we have seen thee in the sanctuary."

And I am not sure that the Lord of glory Himself does not come in here. He speaks of the glory which He had with the Father before all worlds. But He became man, and was "acquainted with grief." His visage was marred more than any man's, and His countenance more than the sons of men. He bared His back to the smiter, and His cheek to them that plucked off the hair. He could say when here, I have seen "thy power and thy glory"-"Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."