ake from
Him the glory that is due to His name. For your love will suffer, and
become a mere sentiment, inoperative and sometimes unwholesome, unless
you keep in mind Peter's injunction.

But, further, there is included in this commandment, not only what
Isaiah said, 'Let Him be your fear and your dread,' but also a reverent
love and trust. For we do not hallow Christ as we ought, unless we
absolutely confide in every word of His lips. Did you ever think that
not to trust Jesus Christ is to blaspheme and profane that holy name by
which we are called; and that to hallow Him means to say to Him, 'I
believe every word that Thou speakest, and I am ready to risk my life
upon Thy veracity'? Distrust is dishonouring the Master, and taking from
Him the glory that is due unto His name.

Then there is another point to be noted: 'Sanctify in your hearts Christ
as Lord.' That is Peter's addition to Isaiah's words, and it is not a
mere piece of tautology, but puts great emphasis into the exhortation.
What is a man's heart, in New Testament and Old Testament language? It
is the very centre-point of the personal self. And when Peter says,
'Hallow Him in your hearts,' he means that, deep down in the very midst
of your personal being, as it were, there should be, fundamental to all,
and interior to all, this reverential awe and absolute trust in Jesus
Christ--an habitual thought, a central emotion, an all-dominant impulse.
'Out of the heart are the issues of life.' Put the healing agent into
it, the fountain-head, and all the streams that pour out thence will be
purified and sweetened. Deep in the heart put Christ, and life will be
pure.

Now, in another part of this letter the Apostle says, 'Ye are a
spiritual house.' I think some notion of the same sort is running in his
mind here. He thinks of each man's heart as being a shrine in which the
god is enthroned, and in which worship is rendered. And if we have
Christ in our hearts, then our hearts are temples; and if we 'hallow'
the Christ that dwells within us, we shall take care that there are no
foul things in that sanctuary. We dishonour the indwelling Deity when
into that same heart we allow to come lusts, foulnesses, meannesses,
worldlinesses, passions, sins, and all the crew of reptiles and wild
beasts that we sometimes admit there. If we hallow Christ in our hearts,
in any true fashion, He will turn out the money-changers and overturn
the tables. And if we desire to hallow Him