asks and obtains this
blessing: let us take our place _in Him_, and rejoice in the
assurance of an answer.

4. It is _the Spirit of truth_ through whom the Father does this
work, so that we dwell in the truth, and the truth in us. Let us
yield very freely and very fully to the leading of the Spirit, in
our intercourse with God's Word, that, as the Son prays, the Father
may make us holy in the truth.

5. Let us, in the light of this work of the Three-One, never read
the Word but with this aim: to be made holy in the truth by God.

Seventeenth Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Crucifixion.

'For their sakes I _sanctify_ myself, that they themselves also
may be _sanctified_ in truth.'--John xvii. 19.

'He said, Lo, I am come to do Thy will. In which will we have been
_sanctified_ through the offering of the body of Jesus once for
all. For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
_sanctified_.'--Heb. x. 9, 10, 14.

It was in His High-priestly prayer, on His way to Gethsemane and
Calvary, that Jesus thus spake to the Father: 'I sanctify myself.' He
had not long before spoken of Himself as 'the Son whom the Father hath
sanctified and sent into the world.' From the language of Holy Scripture
we are familiar with the thought that, what God has sanctified, man has
to sanctify too. The work of the Father, in sanctifying the Son, is the
basis and groundwork of the work of the Son in sanctifying Himself. If
His Holiness as man was to be a free and personal possession, accepted
and assimilated in voluntary and conscious self-determination, it was
not enough that the Father sanctify Him: He must sanctify Himself too.

This self-sanctifying of our Lord found place through His whole life,
but culminates and comes out in special distinctness in His crucifixion.
Wherein it consists is made clear by the words from the Epistle to the
Hebrews. The Messiah spake: 'Lo, I come to do Thy will.' And then it is
added, 'In the which will we have been sanctified through the offering
of the body of Christ.' It was the offering of the body of Christ that
was the will of God: in doing that will He sanctified us. It was of the
doing that will in the offering His body that He spake, 'I sanctify
myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.' The
giving up of His will to God's will in the agony of Gethsemane, and then
the doing of that will in the obe