t renewal
of his nature will give him. He wants to see these things from a
stand-point which he has not yet attained. He had far better let them go
for the present, and concentrate his resolution on this one point: 'I give
myself to Jesus without reserve. Whatever he tells me I may enjoy I will
endeavor to enjoy in his love and fear. Whatever he bids me cast away,
though it be a right hand, I will cut it off and cast it from me.' " A
young man once came to me saying: "There seems to be but one thing in the
way of my entire surrender to Christ. If I become a Christian, and a
member of the church, I don't see how I can ever take any public part in
the religious meetings. If I could only decide whether God required this
of me, I think my way would be clear." I said to him, "My brother, you are
not called on to settle that question now. You have no means of deciding
it. You had better drop it altogether for the present. God has promised
that if you will commit your ways unto him he will direct you. Now I
believe you sincerely want to do God's will, and that you are ready,
whenever he shall show it you, to pledge yourself to do your duty. Leave
the matter there; and if, at any time, this duty should be thrust upon
you, do it in God's name and strength." He soon after joined the church,
and has borne himself since with a fidelity and devotion which speak well
for the thoroughness of the work of grace in him.

Now this is what the apostle means by a _living_ sacrifice. This spirit of
consecration infused into sacrifice fills it with life. The sacrifice
becomes "living" only when self dies; when the man says

"Here Lord, I give myself away:
'Tis all that I can do."

The other method of securing nonconformity to the world by acting for the
mere sake of difference or according to circumstances, constitutes a dead
sacrifice. Such were the sacrifices of the Pharisees. They thanked God
they were not as other men; but the difference was but outward. To the
spectator's eye they were not conformed to the world. They did not dress
like it. Their prayers were longer and more frequent. They did not eat
with publicans and sinners. But these differences had become the chief end
of their religious life. Their development was like arranging the limbs of
a corpse for exhibition. They were not the natural, spontaneous outgrowths
of a living inward principle; and hence the Pharisees have passed into
history as the representative hypocrites of