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"All things mine? Oh, how delightful that would be if only it were true!" But it is true. "All things mine that I may make them Christ's? But that is hardly so delightful as having all things for my own." It is more delightful. Nay, to give all to Christ is the only way to make all things yours. So we might talk on this wonderful passage, finding much that seems incredible, but nothing so incredible as the assurance that all things are ours. Even this incredible assertion, however, may grow credible to you if only you approach it from the apostle's point of view.

I. ALL THINGS ARE YOURS.

1. All ministers are yours. "Oh, yes," you say, "that is true enough; but what are we the richer for that?" But I am by no means sure that all ministers are yours. I am quite sure that, if they are, you are much the richer for it.

1. St. Paul's general principle is that the teachers are for the Church, not the Church for the teachers. But the intention of God is one thing and the intention of the Church, as shown by its conduct, is often another.

(1) God intended eloquent Apollos, learned Paul, and sagacious and enthusiastic Peter for the Church at Corinth; but some said, "We are of Apollos." They were charmed with the eloquence of the mighty expositor of Scripture, but they did not care for the learned Paul or the plain Peter. Others attached themselves to Paul, but thought Apollos too rhetorical and Peter too rustic, &c. Thus this ancient Church flung away two-thirds of its treasure.

(2) All the ministers of the Church universal are yours in the design and intention of God; but do you permit them all to be yours? What, all the ministers of the Apostolic, Patristic, Mediaeval, Roman, Episcopal, Presbyterian, &c., branches of the one Catholic Church? All are yours, and yet how few of them are yours!

2. But here you may object: "We have neither the means nor the opportunity of learning from many of Christ's ministers." But do you learn as much, and from as many of them, as you might? Do you study the apostolic preachers with the devotion they deserve? When wise and holy men of other communions than your own publish a volume of choice discourses, do you take as much pains to get it as you take for the last new novel, and read it with even as much interest as you bestow on your daily newspaper? There are those in our Churches who so attach themselves to one minister that, like the Corinthians, they care to hear no one but him. Now I do not say that if you find a minister who can most effectually touch the springs of spiritual thought and emotion within you you are not to love and to addict yourselves to his ministry; but I do say that if you so addict yourselves to one that you can hear no other you are flinging away the greater part of your spiritual heritage. But not only all ministers, "all things" are yours, in precisely the same sense, viz., to use and to profit by.

2. The world. If a deed of gift were placed in your hand which made over a whole country, or even a whole cosmos to you as your private estate, you might be the worse and poorer for it. So vast an estate would entail responsibilities under which the strongest and wisest must faint. If you cared only to make a personal and selfish use of it, and if your possession of it robbed you of all stimulus to labour, to mental and moral culture, you would simply sink into the most astounding sot and sinner under heaven. Property is what we can appropriate. And what in the world is there of which, with due pains and trouble, you cannot get the best it has to give? The splendour of sunrise and sunset, the glory of the seasons, the beauty of flower and herb and spreading tree, the starry canopy of heaven, do they not become yours in proportion as you have power to appropriate their teaching, their value? Any house or piece of land that you have bought you may lose by a thousand accidents, and at the best you will soon have to leave it behind you; but the culture wrought into your very spirit by your love and admiration of the natural world, this will never leave you.

3. What is there in all the forms and varieties of human life which you may not so observe as to learn its highest lessons, as to work the very essence of it into the very substance of your mind? What have men ever done, what great and noble thoughts have they uttered, of which you may not so read as to make all that is so permanently valuable in them your own? Christ has thrown open to you the whole domain of history and of human life; and it rests with you to determine how far you will go up into it and possess yourselves of it.

4. And He has made "death" your friend and servant; for if you believe in Him what is death to you, or to those whom you love, but a transition to more life and fuller?

5. So with "things present," with which we are so seldom content, and "things to come" which we are so apt to fear. All are yours in proportion as you make them yours.

II. ALL ARE YOURS BECAUSE YOU ARE CHRIST'S, AND THAT YOU MAY MAKE THEM CHRIST'S AND GOD'S. Nay, we can only make all things ours as we give them all to Christ and God.

1. All ministers are yours; but when do you make them all yours in fact? Only when you make the best use of the best that is in them, and suffer it to minister to your highest and most enduring welfare. And when you do that, do you not both take them as God's gift to you and give them back to Him?

2. And in the same way you make "life" yours, viz., as you yield to its nobler influences and suffer them to mould and reform you. That is to say, all life becomes yours as you give your personal life to God.

3. So, again, with death. Only those who believe that Christ has overcome the sharpness and taken away the sting of death, only those know that death is a minister of God for their good. And who are these but those for whom to live is Christ and to die gain? Who but those for whom to depart is to be with the Lord? Death is ours only as we are Christ's and God's.

4. And only on the same terms are things present ours and things to come.

(S. Cox, D. D.)

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KJV: Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;

WEB: Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours,