And then the next thing to remind you of is that this consecration is to be applied all through a man’s nature.  Yielding yourselves to God is the talismanic secret of all righteousness, as I have said; and every part of our complex, manifold being is capable of such consecration.  I hallow my heart if its love twines round His heart.  I hallow my thoughts if I take His truth for my guide, and ever seek to be led thereby in practice and in belief.  I hallow my will when it bows and says, ‘Speak, Lord!  Thy servant heareth!’ I hallow my senses when I use them as from Him, with recognition of Him and for Him.  In fact, there are two ways of living in the world; and, narrow as it sounds, I venture to say there are only two.  Either God is my centre, and that is holiness; or self is my centre, in more or less subtle forms, and that is sin.

Then the next step is that this consecration, which will issue in all purity, and will cover the whole ground of a human life, is only possible when we have drunk in the blessed thought ‘beloved of God.’  My yielding of myself to Him can only be the echo of His giving of Himself to me.  He must be the first to love.  You cannot argue a man into loving God, any more than you can hammer a rosebud open.  If you do you spoil its petals.  But He can love us into loving Him, and the sunshine, falling on the closed flower, will expand it, and it will grow by its reception of the light, and grow sunlike in its measure and according to its nature.  So a God who has only claims upon us will never be a God to whom we yield ourselves.  A God who has love for us will be a God to whom it is blessed that we should be consecrated, and so saints.

Then, still further, this consecration, thus built upon the reception of the divine love, and influencing our whole nature, and leading to all purity, is a universal characteristic of Christians.  There is no faith which does not lead to surrender.  There is no aristocracy in the Christian Church which deserves to have the family name given especially to it.  ‘Saint’ this, and ‘Saint’ that, and ‘Saint’ the other—­these titles cannot be used without darkening the truth that this honour and obligation of being saints belong equally to all that love Jesus Christ.  All the men whom thus God has drawn to Himself, by His love in His Son, they are all, if I may so say, objectively holy; they belong to God.  But consecration may be cultivated, and must be cultivated and increased.  There is a solemn obligation laid upon every one of us who call ourselves Christians, to be saints, in the sense that we have consciously yielded up our whole lives to Him; and are trying, body, soul, and spirit, ’to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord.’