nderstands it from the written Word.
Of such a one it may be said that every act of his life is or can be as
truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord's Supper. To say this is
not to bring all acts down to one dead level; it is rather to lift every
act up into a living kingdom and turn the whole life into a sacrament.
If a sacrament is an external expression of an inward grace than we need
not hesitate to accept the above thesis. By one act of consecration of
our total selves to God we can make every subsequent act express that
consecration. We need no more be ashamed of our body--the fleshly
servant that carries us through life--than Jesus was of the humble beast
upon which He rode into Jerusalem. "The Lord hath need of him" may well
apply to our mortal bodies. If Christ dwells in us we may bear about the
Lord of glory as the little beast did of old and give occasion to the
multitudes to cry, "Hosanna in the highest."

That we _see_ this truth is not enough. If we would escape from the
toils of the sacred-secular dilemma the truth must "run in our blood"
and condition the complexion of our thoughts. We must practice living to
the glory of God, actually and determinedly. By meditation upon this
truth, by talking it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling it
to our minds frequently as we move about among men, a _sense_ of its
wondrous meaning will begin to take hold of us. The old painful duality
will go down before a restful unity of life. The knowledge that we are
all God's, that He has received all and rejected nothing, will unify our
inner lives and make everything sacred to us.

This is not quite all. Long-held habits do not die easily. It will take
intelligent thought and a great deal of reverent prayer to escape
completely from the sacred-secular psychology. For instance it may be
difficult for the average Christian to get hold of the idea that his
daily labors can be performed as acts of worship acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ. The old antithesis will crop up in the back of his head
sometimes to disturb his peace of mind. Nor will that old serpent the
devil take all this lying down. He will be there in the cab or at the
desk or in the field to remind the Christian that he is giving the
better part of his day to the things of this world and allotting to his
religious duties only a trifling portion of his time. And unless great
care is taken this will create confusion and bring discouragement and
he