now possessed and moved by the heavenly Christ that liveth in its life. No language is too intense for the Apostle to express his sense of the absolute identity between discipleship and self-abnegation. It is not that as an ethical rule they are to crucify every resisting desire; they have done it; the act of "putting on Christ includes it all; and it is as much too late to recall the sacrifice as for the dead to retrace their steps. No! in that one death all have died to the lower nature; and in that single rising into a diviner sphere, all are risen into a higher air, and live no longer to themselves. They will therefore "yield themselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead."

Does any one repel this language of the Apostle as an enthusiasm, and doubt whether it corresponds with any moral reality in human life? Are the questions raised, whether there is such a temper as this surrender of what we are to God? where he may be that we should yield to him? where is the self that we should resign? I freely own the difficulty of answering such questions in a way that can satisfy the state of mind from which they spring; for they ask you to exhibit in analysis a form of character that lives only as a whole; to find the bones and joints of an organism which by this very act parts with the thrilling features and the deep and tender eye, to become a rigid skeleton ! Religion is not the matter of life that you can spread it out and show it, but the spirit of life that makes it

different from mechanism and death: it is not the poem's rhyme and stanzas that you may count and scan, but the soul of beauty that makes it music, and the pulse of thought that makes it throb. It can be understood only by sympathy from the heart outwards, not by induction from the appearances inwards. Though the most powerful commander of action, and the most productive agency in history, it is not defined by what it does it is a mood, an attitude of soul towards God that alters the whole aspect of the universe, and affixes quite different and deeper meanings to all its symbols. It is a presence at the very springs of thought, sending them down limpid and sparkling with a vital air, that nurtures the roots of things wherever the current flows, and enriches life with deeper forests and with greener fields.

But surely it is not fanciful to say that God asks for our surrender, when he shows us a higher than we are inclined to do, and calls us by a secret yearning to be what we have not yet become. Whence but from him the vision that ever haunts us of a purer and more perfect order in our daily life,-an order less indulgent to our ease, more faithfully accounting for our time, more fresh from our affections? Who is it that smites us to the heart when the petulant word has escaped the lips, or the shameful indulgence degraded our will, or fear and distrust spilt our resolve as water on the ground? What eye is it that looks in upon our infatua

tion, when, after being brought trembling to the very verge of true repentance, we rush in our pride into selfexcuse instead, and parch up the inward tears of godly sorrow by the dry heats of a false defiance? It is not we that conduct all this sad strife and administer this deep experience; we neither fetch our own inspirations nor inflict our own retributions. It is a holier Spirit that broods near us, and flings athwart us his shadow or his flash; and till we have confused our vision, and let the transparent air grow thick, he comes to us with an authority that is its own credential. We well know that there is a sacrifice that we are on the instant called upon to make; of our pleasure, our repute, our anger, or our pride; and if we make it not, the shame and self-reproach which we suffer are not for our folly, not for our weakness only, but for divine affection spurned and natural reverence withheld.

There is a special characteristic, which is also a marvellous power, in the Christian mood of sacrifice. It is not the mere rallying of a better part of self against a worse; not the playing off of past resolve against the present weakness; not even an obedience to the Law by which heaven orders us to live; not any active, strenuous, spasmodic effort at righteousness; but a passing out of our own disposal into that of another; a quiet tender of the hand that we may be led; a withering away of evil by only looking into the eyes of the All-Good; a dropping of self-will by simply trusting

ourselves to the love that waits to rescue.

It is a

strength made perfect in weakness, of which mere moral conviction has no suspicion and to which, though nerving the most iron will, it can make no approach. For, in its very essence, it is the attitude of trust towards an infinite Person, a Holy Friend, for whose sake we surrender and at whose feet we fall. We do not, in such mood, tighten and compress what faculties we have, so as to harden our resisting power, like one that is trying not to cry out in pain; but, on the contrary, we relax the self-reliant struggle and fight no more; and softly leave ourselves to the dear God who communes with us and has strength enough for all. And so we do not set our face against the anguish and the strife, and plunge into it like diver into icy stream; but simply suffer the pain, whatever it be, to pass through us as a phenomenon, to move slowly or even settle if it will, and use us freely up, if only we are the fuel and God the kindling fire.

Is there then, I shall perhaps be asked, no room for the human will ? no demand for activity of our own? If we are to place ourselves as mere material in the Divine hand, it would seem that all the claims upon us must be satisfied by a passive quietism.

This objection would be just, if, in yielding to God's will, we renounced our own, and committed moral suicide in order to live in him alone. Instead of this, the adoption of his will is the highest act of our own; the

abnegation only of our false self, the affirmation of the real and true. There is no substitution of the Divine for the human; but only a concurrence. We have still our alternative problem set before us, requiring us to choose whether we will give ourselves to some low and easy desire, or to a rival affection which we know to be consecrated by the preference of God. In this choice consists our moral activity, and the expression, -anything but passive,―of our responsible personality. But I submit that, to the spiritual aspect and power of the character, it makes all the difference, whether our higher choice is regarded by us as an exercise of our own judgment, guaranteed only by some balance of evidence or feeling; or as an acceptance of that which is already chosen of God, and identified with his perfect approval. In the one case, the conscience is apt to be full of anxiety and caution, as it thinks, Here I must guide myself by my own light,' and to fret and argue about the way, and to tread it at last as its own path, taken honestly on mere personal security. In the other case, it is an act of trust on which the conscience enters as it says 'Here I am guided by the Heavenly hand'; and the affection which it follows, being identified with God's, loses its individual character, with all the questionings and selfdistrust and scruples which attach to whatever is personal it speaks to us as transcendent and divine; and we have only to drop all reluctance and go with it,