ted to His service, unless we are being
made day by day pure in heart, and like Him to whom we say that we
belong. A human being can only be God's by the surrender of heart and
will, and through the continual appropriation into his own character and
life, of righteousness and purity like that which belongs to God.
Holiness is God's stamp upon a man, His 'mark,' by which He says--This
man belongs to Me. As you write your name in a book, so God writes His
name on His property, and the name that He writes is the likeness of His
own character.

Note, again, that in God's church there is no aristocracy of sanctity,
nor does the name of saint belong only to those who live high above the
ordinary tumults of life and the secularities of daily duty. You may be
as true a saint in a factory--ay! and a far truer one--than in a
hermitage. You do not need to cultivate a mediaeval or Roman Catholic
type of ascetic piety in order to be called saints. You do not need to
be amongst the select few to whom it is given here upon earth, but not
given without their own effort, to rise to the highest summits of holy
conformity with the divine will. But down amongst all the troubles and
difficulties and engrossing occupations of our secular work, you may be
living saintly lives; for the one condition of being holy is that we
should know whose we are and whom we serve, and we can carry the
consciousness of belonging to Him into every corner of the poorest, most
crowded, and most distracted life, recognising His presence and seeking
to do His will. The saint is the man who says, 'O Lord, truly I am Thy
servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds.' Because He has loosed my bonds, the
bonds that held me to my sins, He has therein fastened me with far more
stringent bonds of love to the sweet and free service of His redeeming
love. All His children are His saints.

The Old Testament ritual had one sacrifice which carried this truth in
it. It is the first prescribed in the Book of Leviticus, the ceremonial
book--namely, the burnt offering. Its especial meaning was this, that
the whole man is to be laid upon God's altar and there consumed in the
fire of a divine love. It began with expiation, as all sacrifices must,
and on the footing of expiation there followed the transformation, by
the fire of God, from gross earthliness into vapour and odour which
went up in wreaths of fragrance acceptable to God. So _we_ are to be
laid upon the divine altar. So, because