s from us is only in order
that He may have the right to save us to the uttermost, if we could but
believe it.

We may say next, that if our ultimate condition must be that of entire
subjection and surrender to and harmony with the Divine Will, how sad
it is that our consecration is so slow, so protracted, so ungracious;
that we take so much time to reach the point where we are altogether
the Lord's. People can read the mystery of conversion in the parable
of the dry bones in Ezekiel; but there is consecration in the story,
too. Little by little we see the dead man coming into the place of
blessing; bone to bone, sinew to sinew, nerve to nerve; and when there
is the complete structure of a man, comes the vivifying breath from the
four winds. Not before, for God must have a man to quicken; He does
not inspire skeletons or fragments; as at the first, when a man stands
before Him, He breathes into him the breath of life and he becomes a
living soul.

We may well be ashamed when we think of the way in which consecration
to God is made. We are like the man who, because he was irritated at a
claim made upon him for a sum of money, went and paid the bill in
farthings. So we pay our dues to God, giving as little as we can, and
taking as long about it as we list. Perhaps it is because we treat Him
that way, that God is obliged to appear exacting and talk to us about
uttermost farthings at all.

Perhaps we shall be right in concluding from the 39th verse, that there
is something in the resurrection contingent on the consecration: "I
will raise _it_ up at the last day"; of one thing we may be very sure,
that the life to come is not only conterminous with but continuous with
the life that is. Death changes our surroundings but not our
characters. There is no more breach of continuity in those than there
is in an algebraical curve that goes to infinity.

We may, indeed, get dying grace, and hold a consecration meeting upon
our dying beds, but it is not death that consecrates, nor the grave
that sanctifies and cleanses from all sin. We shall begin the next
life pretty much where we left off in this. We were singing a little
while ago--

Let the veil become more thin,
Let the glory pierce between;

but, mark you, that veil does not become more thin by pulling out a
thread here and a thread there; remember how at the Crucifixion the
veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; the
veil that is