2. The next element is purification. — It follows almost without saying that if you set apart a person or a thing to the service of an absolutely holy God, anything that defiles that person or thing renders it unfit for God's use, and hence, though the first meaning of the word is separation, it speedily " acquires," as Archbishop Trench in his work on the New Testament synonyms points out, " a moral significance " ; thus the thought of purification is added to the fundamental idea of separation. If I want to separate a ' F. Q. Peabody, Sunday Evenings in the College Cha^d, 250.
ST. JOHN XVII. 19 301
cup to God's service, and that cup is polluted, I must not only set it apart for God's use, I must separate it from the pollution that is in it. Thus separation involves the idea of the removal of a defilement which is inconsistent with holy use. If I am to be separated to God, and sanctified for God's service, it is not enough that I should be set apart without any reference to my intrinsic character. The character itself must be purified from the defile- ment which makes it unfit to be used in a holy service. " If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work" (2 Tim. ii. 21). Thus we see that the deeper thought of the moral and spiritual renovation follows close upon the first great meaning of separation, and in fact springs out of it.
^ Henry Drummond never said a truer thing than when he declared that what God wanted was not more of us, but a better brand. We need the perfecting of holiness for the perfecting alike of our usefulness and of our happiness. According to the Divine ordination, holiness and happiness are evermore inseparable. This is the secret of the bliss of heaven. And in proportion as holiness is cherished in the heart and practised in the life, will the new Jerusalem come down from God out of heaven.
The men of grace have found
Glory begun below. Celestial fruits on earthly ground
From faith and hope may grow.^
3. Transformation. — The purification is followed by a gradual transformation into the image of Christ. " Sanctify them in the truth." " The truth " is not only the element in which we are to live, but the element into which we are to be transformed. The purposed end of the truth is not that we may find wisdom, but that we may gain holiness. That is to be the Christian distinctive- ness ; we are to be clothed in the garb of truth, and the world is to recognize, by our moral garments, that we are the kinsmen of the Lord. And in order that we may attain to this spiritual beauty, it is needful that we take our individual powers and de- liberately separate them and dedicate them unto the truth. We must have a consecration service, and devote our reason to the * P. S. Heuson, The Four Faces, 226.
302 THE MASTER'S CONSECRATION
truth. And we must have a consecration service, and devote our affections and our will. And the powers of the second rank must not be allowed to remain in assumed inferiority or defilement. Our imaginations must be devoted to the truth, and so must our language, and so must our humour. Every faculty and function in our life must be set apart to the clean, beautiful, beautifying truth, as revealed to us in our Saviour by His promised Spirit.
*|j A Connecticut farmer came to a well-known clergyman, saying that the people in his neighbourhood had built a new meeting-house, and that they wanted this clergyman to come and dedicate it. The clergyman, accustomed to participate in dedi- catory services where different clergymen took different parts of the service, inquired :
" What part do you want me to take in the dedication ? "
The farmer, thinking that this question applied to the part of the building to be included in the dedication, replied :
" Why, the whole thing ! Take it all in, from underpinning to steeple."
That man wanted the building to be wholly sanctified as a temple of God, and that all at once. " Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? "^
(1) We reach our best hy devoting ourselves to the interests of others. — I am my best, not simply for myself, but for the world. Is there anything in all the teachings that man has had from his fellow-man, all that has come down to him from the lips of God, that is nobler, that is more far-reaching than this, that I am to be my best not simply for my own sake, but for the sake of that world which, by being my best, I shall make more complete, I shall, according to my ability, renew and recreate in the image of God ? That is the law of my existence. And the man that makes that the law of his existence neglects neither himself nor his fellow-men ; he neither becomes the self-absorbed student and cultivator of his own life upon the one hand, nor does he become, abandoning himself, simply the wasting benefactor of his brethren upon the other. I watch the workman build upon the building which by and by is to soar into the skies, to toss its pinnacles up to the heaven, and I see him looking up and wondering where those pinnacles are to be, thinking how high they are to be, measuring the feet, wondering how they are to be built, and all