can only be the echo of His giving of
Himself to me. He must be the first to love. You cannot argue a man
into loving God, any more than you can hammer a rosebud open. If you
do you spoil its petals. But He can love us into loving Him, and the
sunshine, falling on the closed flower, will expand it, and it will
grow by its reception of the light, and grow sunlike in its measure
and according to its nature. So a God who has only claims upon us
will never be a God to whom we yield ourselves. A God who has love
for us will be a God to whom it is blessed that we should be
consecrated, and so saints.

Then, still further, this consecration, thus built upon the reception
of the divine love, and influencing our whole nature, and leading to
all purity, is a universal characteristic of Christians. There is no
faith which does not lead to surrender. There is no aristocracy in
the Christian Church which deserves to have the family name given
especially to it. 'Saint' this, and 'Saint' that, and 'Saint' the
other--these titles cannot be used without darkening the truth that
this honour and obligation of being saints belong equally to all that
love Jesus Christ. All the men whom thus God has drawn to Himself, by
His love in His Son, they are all, if I may so say, objectively holy;
they belong to God. But consecration may be cultivated, and must be
cultivated and increased. There is a solemn obligation laid upon
every one of us who call ourselves Christians, to be saints, in the
sense that we have consciously yielded up our whole lives to Him; and
are trying, body, soul, and spirit, 'to perfect holiness in the fear
of the Lord.'

Paul's letter, addressed to the 'beloved in God,' the 'called saints'
that are in Rome, found its way to the people for whom it was meant.
If a letter so addressed were dropped in our streets, do you think
anybody would bring it to you, or to any Christian society as a
whole, recognising that we were the people for whom it was meant? The
world has taunted us often enough with the name of saints; and
laughed at the profession which they thought was included in the
word. Would that their taunts had been undeserved, and that it were
not true that 'saints' in the Church sometimes means less than 'good
men' out of the Church! 'Seeing that we have these promises, dearly
beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and
spirit; perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.'

PAUL'S LONGING