usk is burst and removed, can
the seed germinate and grow up. And it is only where there is a heart in
harmony with God's Holiness, longing for it, yielding itself to it, that
the word will really make holy. It is the heart that is not content with
the word, but seeks the Living, Holy One in the word, to which He will
reveal the truth, and in it Himself. It is the word given to us by
Christ as God gave it Him, and received by us as it was by Him, to rule
and fill our life, which has power to make holy.

But we must notice very specially how our Saviour says, Sanctify them,
not in the word, but in the truth. Just as in man there is body, soul,
and spirit, so in truth too. There is first _word-truth_; a man may have
the correct form of words while he does not really apprehend the truth
they contain. Then there is _thought-truth_; there may be a clear
intellectual apprehension of truth without the experience of its power.
The Bible speaks of truth as a living reality: this is the _life-truth_,
in which the very Spirit of the truth we profess has entered and
possessed our inner being. Christ calls Himself _the Truth_: He is said
to be full of grace and truth. The Divine life and grace are in Him as
an actually substantial existence and reality. He not only acts upon us
by thoughts and motives, but communicates, as a _reality_, the eternal
life He brought for us from the Father. The Holy Spirit is called the
Spirit of Truth; what He imparts is all real and actual, the very
substance of unseen things; He guides into the Truth, not thought-truth
or doctrine only, but life-truth, the personal possession of the Truth
as it is in Jesus. As the Spirit of Truth He is the Spirit of Holiness;
the life of God, which is His Holiness, He brings to us as an actual
possession.

It is now of this living Truth, which dwells in the word, as the
seed-life dwells in the husk, that Jesus says, 'Make them holy in the
Truth: Thy word is Truth.' He would have us mark the intimate
connection, as well as the wide difference, between the word and the
truth. The connection is one willed by God and meant to be inseparable.
'Thy word is truth;' with God they are one. But not with man. Just as
there were men in close contact and continual intercourse with Jesus, to
whom He was only a man, and nothing more, so there are Christians who
know and understand the word, and yet are strangers to its true
spiritual power. They have the letter but not the spirit;