r_, Oxford (1898).

[2] 1 Cor. iii. 21-3.

[3] Phil. iv. 13.

{97}

DIVISION V. Sec. i. CHAPTER XII. 1-2.

_Self-surrender in response to God._

And first of all the general attitude of mind is defined, which it
befits us to adopt towards God as He has now revealed Himself to us.
It is the response of entire self-surrender--the response of sacrifice
to sacrifice. St. Paul 'beseeches,' or rather 'encourages,' or
'summons' the Roman Christians, using for his motive power[1] all the
rich store of divine compassions which he has just been occupied in
disclosing or explaining to them, to make the only response really
possible to such an exhibition of divine love; and that is to present
themselves in sacrifice to God. What God asks is not dead victims but
living men, in body as well as spirit consecrated to His service and
rendered acceptable in His sight: and this sort of self-oblation, {98}
on the pattern of Christ, is the only reasonable sort of divine service
for man to offer. The transitory world, to which such an ideal is
quite alien, is indeed all around them, but they are not to suffer
themselves to be assimilated to its fleeting fashion. Their whole
point of view is changed and become new; and this must result in so
thorough a transformation of their old worldly ways of thinking that a
new inward light will shine in their hearts, and they will be able to
discriminate and see what God's will is, and so to follow the way of
perfection.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, _which_ is
your reasonable service. And be not fashioned according to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove
what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

This short paragraph is full of meaning, and is profoundly
characteristic of St. Paul in thought and language.

The 'therefore' is one of the great transitional 'therefores[2]' by
which St. Paul shows his constant sense of the inter-connexion of
doctrine and life: the doctrine passing by a clear logic into the
practical life, and the life drawing all its {99} practical motives
from the realities disclosed in the doctrine. It is truly nothing
whatever but shallowness and 'shortness of thought' which can suffer us
to imagine that the Christian character--I do not say all morality, but
the Christian character--could long survive th