in God.  So it was in the Old Testament—­“stand in awe and sin not,” “commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still,” “be still and know that I am God.”  So with Christ, “for the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation, but the kingdom of heaven is within you,” and so with Paul, “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”  “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ... that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, to the end that ye being rooted and grounded in love may come to apprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ.”

God’s guidance of his life, first of all, produces in a man a great sense of stability.  “I have set the Lord always before me:  because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved.”  He who has found God so careful of him, he whom God hath regarded as worth speaking to and counseling and disciplining, will be certain that he shall endure, provided he is sure of his own loyalty.  The life so loved of God, so provided for, and in such close communion with the Eternal is not, can not be the creature of the day, and this assurance stands firm in face of even death and the horrible corruption of the body.  The psalmist refuses to believe that he is to dwell in the horrible under-world forever—­either himself or any of God’s believers.  “Thou must not, thou wilt not leave my soul in sheol, thou must not, thou wilt not suffer thy loved ones to see the pit.”  To this man it is incredible, and our hearts bear witness to the truth if we have had any experience of God’s blessing and guidance.  To this man it is incredible that the life God has cared for and guided and spoken to and brought into such intimate communion with himself can find its end in death.  Those whom God has loyally loved and who have loyally loved God—­for this word badly translated “holy” in the psalms really has that actual significance—­those whom God has loyally loved and who have loyally loved God shall never die.  As He lives so shall they; they shall never be absent from His presence.  Be the future unknown and unknowable, be we ourselves incapable of conceiving the processes by which this mortal shall put on immortality, or where heaven is, or what eternity can possibly be to those who have never lived outside time, yet that future is secure and its immortal character is indubitable—­where God is there shall His servants be, and because He is there their life shall be peace and joy, and because He is eternal it shall last forevermore.  That thought is the whole of the hope and argument.  We are assured of the future life because we have known God, and as we have found Him to be true to us and proved ourselves true to Him.