The deep significance of this promise comes out clearly when we connect it with the other promises of New Testament times. The great feature of the New Covenant, in its superiority to the old, is this, that whereas in the law and its institution all was external, in the New the kingdom of God would be within. God's laws given and written into the heart, a new spirit put within us, God's own Spirit given to dwell within our spirit, and so the heart and the inner life fitted to be the temple and home of God; it is this constitutes the peculiar privilege of the ministration of the Spirit. Our text is perhaps the only one in the Old Testament in which this indwelling of the Holy One, not among the people only, but in the heart of the individual believer, is clearly brought out. In this the two aspects of the Divine Holiness would reach their full manifestation: I dwell in the High and Holy place, and with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. In His heaven above, the high and lofty place, and in our heart, contrite and humble, God has His home. God's Holiness is His glory that separates Him by an infinite distance, not only from sin, but even from the creature, lifting Him high above it. God's Holiness is His Love, drawing Him down to the sinner, that He may lift him into His fellowship and likeness, and make him holy as He is holy. The Holy One seeks the humble; the humble find the Holy One: such are the two lessons we have to learn to-day. _The Holy One seeks the humble._ There is nothing that has such an attraction for God, that has such affinity with holiness, as a contrite and humble spirit. The reason is evident. There is no law in the natural and the spiritual world more simple, than that two bodies cannot at the same moment occupy the same space. Only so much as the new occupant can expel of what the space was filled with can it really possess. In man, self has possession, and self-will the mastery, and there is no room for God. It is simply impossible for God to dwell or rule when self is on the throne. As long as, through the blinding influence of sin and self-love, even the believer is not truly conscious of the extent to which this self-will reigns, there can be no true contrition or humility. But as it is discovered by God's Spirit, and the soul sees how it has just been self that has been secretly keeping out God, with what shame it is broken down, and how it longs to break utterly away from self, that God may have His place! It is this brokenness, and continued breaking down, that is expressed by the word contrition. And as the soul sees what folly and guilt it has been, by its secret honouring of self, to keep the Holy One from the place which He alone has a right to, and which He would so blessedly have filled, it casts itself down in utter self-abasement, with the one desire to be nothing, and to give God the place and the praise that is His due.