rtion.

How then are we rightly to apply this command?

The apostle, in giving us an answer, takes up the question at the very
point at which most inquirers do, viz.: at the matter of _sacrifice_. For
this is the way in which it presents itself to most minds. In order not to
be conformed to the world, I must sacrifice much that is of the world.
What, now, may I retain, and what must I relinquish?

And in Paul's answer, he strikes directly at any such method of putting
the question. Non-conformity to the world involves sacrifice, it is true,
but not a sacrifice made in any such spirit as this--a spirit that ere it
gives itself to Christ, sits down and begins to sort its possessions,
pleasures, pursuits, into two piles, saying: "this for God, this for the
world: this goes back to my treasure house, this I throw away." Not so. He
sweeps the whole into one heap, and says, "I beseech you brethren, by the
mercies of God, that ye _present your bodies a living sacrifice, and be
transformed by the renewing of your mind_." He asks that the _whole man_,
with all his belongings, be made an offering to God, even as he says in
another place, "the very God of peace sanctify you _wholly_, and I pray
God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." He rises above details of sacrifice to a
sacrifice which includes and regulates all details; and in so doing he is
but insisting upon the precept of Christ: "If any man will be my disciple,
let him _deny himself_." And notice particularly the meaning of this
precept which is so generally but half understood. It is not, let him cut
himself off from this thing or that thing, but let him _deny himself_;
literally, let him _say that self is not_, and that the will of Christ is
_everything_. Holding fast this principle a man cannot greatly err. The
will of Christ and the will of the world are so diametrically opposite,
that he cannot go toward the one without going away from the other. A man
has no business to waste time pondering over the _details_ of his
sacrifice for Christ's sake, tormenting himself with deciding between what
is right and what is wrong; what is worldly and what is heavenly. The will
of Christ once heartily embraced as a rule of life will teach him to
decide. Christ received into the heart will regulate its affinities and
repulsions. The law of the _spirit_ of life in Christ Jesus shall make the
soul free from the law of