bows and says, 'Speak, Lord! Thy servant heareth!' I hallow my senses
when I use them as from Him, with recognition of Him and for Him. In
fact, there are two ways of living in the world; and, narrow as it
sounds, I venture to say there are only two. Either God is my centre,
and that is holiness; or self is my centre, in more or less subtle
forms, and that is sin.

Then the next step is that this consecration, which will issue in all
purity, and will cover the whole ground of a human life, is only
possible when we have drunk in the blessed thought 'beloved of God.'
My yielding of myself to Him can only be the echo of His giving of
Himself to me. He must be the first to love. You cannot argue a man
into loving God, any more than you can hammer a rosebud open. If you
do you spoil its petals. But He can love us into loving Him, and the
sunshine, falling on the closed flower, will expand it, and it will
grow by its reception of the light, and grow sunlike in its measure
and according to its nature. So a God who has only claims upon us
will never be a God to whom we yield ourselves. A God who has love
for us will be a God to whom it is blessed that we should be
consecrated, and so saints.

Then, still further, this consecration, thus built upon the reception
of the divine love, and influencing our whole nature, and leading to
all purity, is a universal characteristic of Christians. There is no
faith which does not lead to surrender. There is no aristocracy in
the Christian Church which deserves to have the family name given
especially to it. 'Saint' this, and 'Saint' that, and 'Saint' the
other--these titles cannot be used without darkening the truth that
this honour and obligation of being saints belong equally to all that
love Jesus Christ. All the men whom thus God has drawn to Himself, by