that of St. John
above all, than those of the Middle Ages.

2. But the ministry itself was but the consummation of the age-long work
now "accomplished." Throughout the whole course of man's history, in the
entire spiritual evolution, whose first steps and rude beginnings we
trace in the burial mounds of prehistoric races, He Whose lips now
uttered that great "It is accomplished" had been the light of men, never
amid thick clouds of error and cruelty and superstition wholly
extinguished. In every approach of man to God however dimly conceived
of, the Word, the Eternal Son, had been offering Himself in sacrifice to
the Father.

So here, in the perfect act of the moral obedience of a human will, is
that to which all sacrifices not only pointed forward but, all the time,
meant, and aimed at, and symbolised, as men so slowly and so painfully
groped after, felt their way to God, "if haply they might find Him."

"It is accomplished"--the true meaning of sacrifice, of all religion,
heathen and Jewish, is attained and laid bare.

Thousands of years of human development reach their climax, find their
issue and their explanation in these words.

3. In its teaching, this sixth word ascends to the heights, to the
mysterious and ineffable relationships of the Godhead--which are the
inner reality and meaning of all morality and religion--and it descends
to the depths, to the lowliest details of the most commonplace life.

All work, for the Christian, is raised to the level, to the dignity of
sacrifice. Once and for all we must rid ourselves of that idea which has
wrought so much mischief, that sacrifice necessarily connotes pain, loss,
death. Essentially our sacrifice is what essentially Christ's sacrifice
was, the joyous dedication of the will to God, the Source and Light of
all our being.

The daily round, the common task,
Will furnish all we need to ask.

All work is sacred, or may be so, if we will. For all work has been
consecrated for evermore by the perfect obedience, that is, the perfect
sacrifice of the Son of man, the Head of our race. There is no task
which any Christian, anywhere, can be called upon to do, which cannot be
made part of that joyous service, that glad sacrifice, which, in union
with that of Jesus Christ our Lord, we, one with Him in sacramental
union, "offer and present" to the Father.

VIII
THE SEVENTH WORD

"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." ST. LUKE XXIII. 46