^ A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Emlth, 220.
* Browning, Eabbi ben Uzra. * S. D. Gordon.
ROMANS XII. I 219
^ All misuse of the body is not of vulgar vice, the kind of thing which is soul-murder, and which declares its character openly and visibly. There is a subtler misuse. There is a way of living which gives increasing concern to the incidentals of life, which spends itself for comfort ; for comfort which may be quite of a refined kind, but which, because it is raised into an essential, instead of relegated to an inconsequent and incidental matter, is unutterably vicious. It is keen on luxuries and pleasures that are not sin in themselves, but, unless they are kept in minor place, are utterly and fatally deadening. " Pride, fulness of bread, and prosperous ease," these deaden the spirit; they make the ears deaf too, and the hands unready for the needs of the world and the claims of God. Be on your guard. What is ailing with many of us is that we are too fatally comfortable. It is sucking out the better life of us. " How could I fail to win ? " said Frederick the Great, after the battle of Eosbach. " Soubrise had seven cooks and one spy ; I had seven spies and one cook." The remark has a wide application. Watch the proportion of things. Life is a battle which has a way of hanging on to the proportions a man preserves between the commissariat and the intelligence depart- ments ; between his cooks and his sentries. " What I say unto one, I say unto you all — Watch." ^
(3) And again, yielding also means ceasing to struggle. It means no longer trying to keep oneself up — putting forth vigorous efforts to keep oneself from sinking — but casting all upon Him who is able to keep us from falling.
^ It is indeed a life of self-denial this, and I feel as if now for the first time I had even a dim view of what it is to be not one's own, to me a heart-rending lesson, a long and bitter lesson, one I would gladly exchange for fasting, or scourging, or what asceticism you will. Let me keep my own will, let me be my own, aim at my own idea of holiness, aid myself with my own props, and I would do most things. But this is the hard thing to learn, that in everything, from this moment for ever, I am not only not to get my own will, but I am to desire not to get my own will, to will to be controlled by another wholly and unceasingly. This has to me at times all the pain of dissolution. It is indeed a dying to this world.
Death ends indeed the cares of life, Yet shudders Hfe when death comes near, And such the fond heart's death-Kke strife When first the loved one does appear.
^ T. Yates, Sculptors of Life, 108.
220 THE BODY FOR GOD
For, where true love is wakened, dies The tyrant self, that despot dark. Eejoice then that in death he lies, And breathe morn's free air, with the lark.*
3. And what is the nature of the offering ? In the old time the bodies offered in sacrifice were those of bulls and goats — not men, but possessions of men. That order of sacrifice had now passed away, since One had come who had borne our sins in His own body on the fatal tree ; and in His doing of the will of God we had been hallowed by the offering of His body once for all. But sacrifice itself had not therefore passed away from among mankind. A riper and more complete form of sacrifice had succeeded, no longer of our possessions only, but of our very selves. But it is a living sacrifice. In this there is no contra- diction. We sometimes fancy that sacrifice must needs involve death, or at least suppression. But it is not so. True sacrifice involves that utter offering of which death is the complete fulfil- ment. But this sacrifice of the will is not always executed in act. The sacrifice of Abraham was a true sacrifice, though Isaac was given back to him in life. The presenting, as St. Paul calls it, of Isaac v/as already complete; faith had already done its work. But when we present our very selves to God as a living sacrifice, alive with a new life, displacing the old sinful semblance of life which works only destruction, then by that same act we present our members to God as ready instruments of His righteousness. But this could not be if in sacrificing ourselves we always slew ourselves. The surrender of life to God is complete, but His will most commonly is to give us back the surrendered life as life from the dead.
(1) The sacrifice is to he a living sacrifice. — And since our sacrifice is to be a " living sacrifice " — something that has life in it, and not a thing which has lost its life or had its life taken away — ^we are not to wait till we are dead or nearly dead, we are not to wait till the infirmities of old age come upon us, or till the withering hand of sickness or of disease lays hold of us, before we give ourselves to God. Our life, the best of our life — the health, strength, and vigour of manhood — are to be given to Him. Why cannot there be a holy alliance between the