family. And what has already been said is confirmed by that other title which the Apostle applies to the ministers of the Gospel, viz. stewards of the mysteries of God. They are not masters; they are servants. They are the servants of Christ, who has committed to them certain sacred and important trusts. From Him they have accepted that trust, and to Him they are accountable for its due performance. They have been appointed as the dispensers of the merciful provision made by Christ for his weak and erring servants. They are the express guardians of those holy mysteries of truth and grace which are the very life and support of the Church. To them it belongs to unfold those wondrous truths,—the mystery of a world sunk in misery and sin once more reconciled to God; the mystery, greatest of all, of God manifest in the flesh, of the Son of God coming down from His heavenly throne to raise men from their fallen state, to purchase their salvation at the price of His own blood, and to unite them once more under one head, even Himself, and make them children of a Heavenly Father; the mystery of man adopted into the family of Christ in Holy Baptism, and the mystery of that Holy Sacrament whereby he is strengthened and fed with the spiritual food of the Body and Blood of Christ.

These, my brethren, are the sacred treasures that have been committed to the keeping of God's ministers, for them to dispense as faithful and diligent stewards to those who have a right and title to

them. They themselves have no peculiar interest in them beyond that of all the children of Christ. They dare not appropriate them to themselves to the exclusion of others; they stand only as the distributors of the treasures of God's mercy and truth to all who are, equally with themselves, the objects of God's love and forgiveness. Remember, then, that though the stewards of God's mysteries have, indeed, a most solemn and weighty trust imposed upon them, that you and all those to whom they minister as stewards have their trust also and their duty to perform. To you are proclaimed the glad tidings of salvation, the privileges of union with Christ, and of being partakers of the manifold treasures of grace. To you Christ speaks in the person of His ministers. He cries aloud to you to turn from the path of sin to a life of holiness. He warns you by His threatenings, and encourages you by hopes and promises. He reminds you that you, too, have a high vocation, of which you must walk worthy; that you must strive in this life, by diligence and earnestness, with much self-denial and a courageous opposition against sin, so to fulfil your duty, that in the second coming of Christ you may be found acceptable in His sight, who then shall execute in person the promises and threatenings now proclaimed by His own commissioned servants, "the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God."

SERMON XIV.

The Christian Sacrifice.

ROMANS xii. 1.

"I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

IN

N the preceding chapter the Apostle closed the argument, wherein he had unfolded the mystery of man's redemption and of all the manifold blessings depending upon and flowing from it, with an ascription of praise to God for the wisdom which had planned and communicated these gifts to mankind: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to Him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things; to whom be glory for ever. Amen."

Having thus set vividly before his readers the Divine wisdom and compassion, as exemplified in acts of the freest and most unconstrained mercy, he passes by a natural transition to speak of the effects which these mercies should produce on the heart and conduct; and putting them forward as the very

ground of his appeal to his readers, he exhorts them to make the best, the truest, and the fullest return to God in their power, nothing short, in fact, of the devotion of their whole selves, body and soul, to His service. "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." Here, then, is the point suggested by this verse for our consideration, namely, what return shall we make to God for all the benefits that He hath done unto us; what offering can we make to God in token of our gratitude and of our love.

And here, before we proceed to speak of the offering itself which is required of us, it may be well to say a word in reference to the figure under which St. Paul speaks of it. He tells his readers to present their bodies as a sacrifice to God, thus using an expression which, however faintly it may reveal its meaning to some of us, must have pictured most vividly to his Jewish readers the very idea which he intended to convey. The whole subject of sacrifice was familiar to them, and was even then being constantly brought before their eyes. The selecting the victim pure and spotless, the procession to the altar, the offering of the entire animal to God, the shedding of his very life's blood upon the altar, all this they were in the habit of witnessing; and but a few years back, before their conversion to Christianity, had themselves taken part in it.

To us there is no idea more inseparably connected with sacrifice than the entire devoting and giving up of the whole victim, be it what it may, to God. The surrender of it into the hands of the Priest; the offering it on the altar, and giving back its very life to Him from whom it had been originally derived, all this marked as clearly as possible the completeness and unreserved nature of the offering; and it was an idea that could not fail to have been impressed on the minds of those to whom the whole subject was familiar. It was, then, to this impression that St. Paul appealed, when he besought them to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God. He desired to lead them to associate the same idea of completeness and of entire surrender to God with the Christian as with the Jewish offering, and to teach them that if the mercies of God to Christians require from them a thank-offering at all, it must be one that, like the sacrifices of old, is to be given up wholly and entirely to Him.

So much, then, may suffice to shew the meaning of the figure used by the Apostle to denote the Christian offering, and the intention with which it was employed. We find, however, a word connected with it, which at once distinguishes the Christian from all other sacrifices; for we are told that it is to be "living." No sacrifice, as we have seen, under the law was complete until the life of the victim had been poured out upon the altar; but with the ChrisThe Blood of the

tian sacrifice it is far otherwise,