the sand upon the
shore, but intense and vital--and in its remoteness from the conditions
of common material substances, that well expresses and typifies the
lofty and awful quality which separates holiness from mere virtue. "God
is called the Holy One because He is altogether pure, the clear and
spotless Light; so that in the idea of the holiness of God there are
embodied the absolute moral purity and perfection of the Divine nature,
and His unclouded glory" (Keil, _Pent._, ii. 99). In this thought there
is already involved separation, a lofty remoteness.

And when holiness is attributed to man, it never means innocence, nor
even virtue, merely as such. It is always a derived attribute: it is
reflected upon us, like light upon our planet; and like consecration, it
speaks not of man in himself, but in his relation to God. It expresses a
kind of separation to God, and thus it can reach to lifeless things
which bear a true relation to the Divine. The seventh day is thus
"hallowed." It is the very name of the "Holy Place," the "Sanctuary."
And the ground where Moses was to stand unshod beside the burning bush
was pronounced "holy," not by any concession to human weakness, but by
the direct teaching of God. Very inseparable from all true holiness is
separation from what is common and unclean. Holy men may be involved in
the duties of active life; but only on condition that in their bosom
shall be some inner shrine, whither the din of worldliness never
penetrates, and where the lamp of God does not go out.

It is a solemn truth that a kind of inverted holiness is known to
Scripture. Men "sanctify themselves" (it is this very word), "and purify
themselves to go into the gardens, ... eating swine's flesh and the
abomination and the mouse" (Isa. lxvi. 17). The same word is also used
to declare that the whole fruit of a vineyard sown with two kinds of
fruit shall be _forfeited_ (Deut. xxii. 9), although the notion there is
of something unnatural and therefore interdicted, which notion is
carried to the utmost extreme in another derivative from the same root,
expressing the most depraved of human beings.

Just so, the Greek word "anathema" means both "consecrated" and "marked
out for wrath" (Luke xxi. 5; 1 Cor. xvi. 22: the difference in form is
insignificant.) And so again our own tongue calls the saints "devoted,"
and speaks of the "devoted" head of the doomed sinner, being aware that
there is a "separation" in sin as really