-places where the attitude of service is exchanged for
the attitude of supplication; times of quiet communion with God which
shall feed the worshipper's activities as the white snowfields on the
high summits feed the brooks that sparkle by the way, and bring
fertility wherever they run. So, dear brethren, remember that whilst
life is the field of worship there must be the inward worship within
the shrine if there is to be the outward service.

III. Lastly, note the equally comprehensive motive and ground of this
all-inclusive directory for conduct.

'I beseech you, by the mercies of God.' That plural does not mean
that the Apostle is extending his view over the whole wide field of
the divine beneficence, but rather that he is contemplating the one
all-inclusive mercy about which the former part of his letter has
been eloquent--viz. the gift of Christ--and contemplating it in the
manifoldness of the blessings which flow from it. The mercies of God
which move a man to yield himself as a sacrifice are not the diffused
beneficences of His providence, but the concentrated love that lies
in the person and work of His Son.

And there, as I believe, is the one motive to which we can appeal
with any prospect of its being powerful enough to give the needful
impetus all through a life. The sacrifice of Christ is the ground on
which our sacrifices can be offered and accepted, for it was the
sacrifice of a death propitiatory and cleansing, and on it, as the
ancient ritual taught us, may be reared the enthusiastic sacrifice of
a life--a thankoffering for it.

Nor is it only the ground on which our sacrifice is accepted, but it
is the great motive by which our sacrifice is impelled. _There_
is the difference between the Christian teaching, 'present your
bodies a sacrifice,' and the highest and noblest of similar teaching
elsewhere. One of the purest and loftiest of the ancient moralists
was a contemporary of Paul's. He would have re-echoed from his heart
the Apostle's directory, but he knew nothing of the Apostle's motive.
So his exhortations were powerless. He had no spell to work on men's
hearts, and his lofty teachings were as the voice of one crying in
the wilderness. Whilst Seneca taught, Rome was a cesspool of moral
putridity and Nero butchered. So it always is. There may be noble
teachings about self-control, purity, and the like, but an evil and
adulterous generation is slow to dance to such piping.

Our poet has bid us-