and through our Blessed Lord, is that true service, of which all the services of the law on the part of man were figures. I say on the part of man, for it was not in the man, but in the victim offered in his stead, that the death of our Lord, the great atoning sacrifice, that was to open our way into the holy place, was prefigured. Accordingly St. Paul calls it here your REASONABLE service. And as the word reasonable has two senses with us, it may be well to remark in which sense it is here used, as this is quite clear from the original. It might have been truly said that this is a reasonable service, in that justice and right reason require it, as we say it is but reasonable we should do this or that. This indeed would be true, and is in fact implied in the real sense of the words, but here something more is intended. It was but reasonable that the Jews should offer the blood of bulls and of goats, since that was a light thing for God to require of them in consideration of all the benefits they enjoyed at His hands, and since He had a right to command what He would, and reason required that they should obey.

But the service to which we are called is reasonable in a higher sense, namely, as we

say that man is a reasonable creature, and that our Blessed Lord is perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. And it is in this sense that our service of self-sacrifice is here called reasonable, namely, in that it is rendered by an act of reason, and consists of the self-devotion of a reasonable being. It is the sacrifice of righteousness', always set above the sacrifices of the law, and the partaking of that sacrifice of which Messiah speaks in prophecy. Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; mine ears hast Thou opened: burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my hearts

Well then might the holy Apostle use all earnestness, and even beseech those, whom to win, Christ had humbled Himself-beseech them by the mercies of God that they would be partakers in this truly blessed service. For we know-our own conscience tells each one of us but too plainly-that we need urging-reminding-beseechingevery thing that can be done, to make us

e Creed of St. Athanasius.

8 Psalm xl. 6.

f Psalm iv. 5.

heartily undertake each his own part in this reasonable service. But though we may none of us attain to that entire devotedness of soul and body to the service of God that would make us more willing instruments in His hands, and as it were whole burntofferings to His praise; we may at least be moved by this pressing entreaty of one moved to speak, and guided in speaking, by the Holy Spirit of God, to set our minds that way, and to use our reason according to the intent for which we were made reasonable creatures, in thinking of our Creator, and in ordering the whole course of our lives as a daily sacrifice to Him.

We do offer ourselves to Him when we seek to be partakers in the sacrifice of our Lord, by offering the memorials of His Passion, and receiving them again from Him as the Living Bread of the True Melchizedek. We do not take away the offering from God, but add ourselves to It, that we may be sanctified through Him Who communicates Himself to us in It, so that, in the words of St. Paul, We, being many, are one Bread". And He speaks thus highly of the efficacy of that Holy Mystery, not that we may rest in the outward observance of it, but that we

h 1 Cor. x. 17.

may be the more earnest to bring our whole lives and our entire wills in unison with its inward power. Truly as His word is true do we partake of the sacrifice of our Lord, the sacrifice of His death and His eternal Living Sacrifice, and shall not our will consent to the offering? One scarcely knows how to speak of such things, so sadly is our life below the measures of Christian holiness to which that thought directs us. We give the spare scraps of our life as it passes, or the poor dregs of its close, and give them grudgingly and by halves, where our best years, nay, all our days, first and last, were but too little.

How did He Who is our Great Example? Was He contented with the mere rites by which He was presented in infancy to God, and brought again at twelve years old into His Presence? No; even at that tender age He would be about His Father's business. He presented Himself in heart and will, as Joseph and His mother did in outward act. And then again He was equally obedient to His Father's will in going and being subject unto them until His time was come. And then we know how He willingly gave His Soul to grief and His Body to

i Luke ii. 51.

continual labour and suffering, and finally to death, to make Himself a perfect sacrifice for us, and pattern to us. All this we know, and Who it is that has done this, and therefore we know that it is a blessed thing to be made, as in all other things, so in suffering especially, partakers of His sacrifice; we know that if we have here chosen that good part, mercifully offered us through Him, we shall never have it taken from us, but shall stand to all eternity in the presence of the Father, as united to Him, and in Him made Holiness to the Lord.

Now if we take this view of all the acts of a religious life, we shall soon come both to be more diligent in doing them, and to think less of ourselves for doing them never so diligently. When we do a good work we shall think, 'What is this to offer to God, to whom I owe myself and my all?' And if we have any faith and any feeling in us, that thought will both spur us on in action, and also make us rather wonder at His goodness in accepting, than think much of our own devotion in making such offerings as we do.

And besides the making the offering, which is done in the services of religion, especially in the Holy Communion, and in

k Jer. ii. 3.