our intercourse with all the Father's children. Let us study the Divine
image of the love that seeketh not its own, and pray unceasingly that
the Lord may make us to abound in love to each other. The holiest will
be the humblest and most self-forgetting, the gentlest and most
self-denying, the kindest and most thoughtful of others for Jesus' sake.
'Put on therefore, as God's elect, _holy and beloved_, a heart of
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering' (Col. iii. 12,
13).

And then the love toward all men. A love proved in the conduct and
intercourse of daily life. A love that not only avoids anger and evil
temper and harsh judgments, but exhibits the more positive virtue of
active devotion to the welfare and interests of all. A charitable love
that cares for the bodies as well as the souls. A love that not only is
ready to help when it is called, but that really gives itself up to
self-denial and self-sacrifice to seek out and relieve the needs of the
most wretched and unworthy. A love that does indeed take Christ's love,
that brought Him from heaven and led Him to choose the cross, as the
only law and measure for its conduct, and makes everything subordinate
to the Godlike blessedness of giving, of doing good, of embracing and
saving the needy and lost. Thus abounding in love, we shall be
unblameable in holiness.

It is in Christ we are holy; of God we are in Christ, who is made of
God unto us sanctification: it is in this faith that Paul prays that the
Lord, our Lord Jesus, may make us increase and abound in love. The
Father is the fountain, He is the channel; the Holy Spirit is the living
stream. And He is our Life, through the Spirit. It is by faith in Him,
by abiding in Him and in His love, by allowing, in close union with Him,
the Spirit to shed abroad the love of God, that we shall receive the
answer to our prayer, and shall by Himself be established unblameable in
holiness. Let it be with us a prayer of faith that changes into praise:
Blessed be the Lord, who will make us increase and abound in love, and
will establish us unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at
the coming of our Lord Jesus with His holy ones.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

Most Gracious God and Father! again do I thank Thee for that wondrous
salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, which has made us holy
in Christ. And I thank Thee that the Spirit can so make us partakers of
the life of Christ, that w