creed was sufficient, though I think the extent to which they did suppose that has been very much exaggerated.  The temptation of this day is precisely the opposite.  ’Conduct is three-fourths of life,’ says one of our teachers.  Yes.  But what about the fourth fourth which underlies conduct?  Paul’s way is the right way.  Lay broad and deep the foundations of God’s facts revealed to us, and then build upon that the fabric of a noble life.  This generation superficially tends to cut practice loose from faith, and so to look for grapes from thorns and figs from thistles.  Wrong thinking will not lead to right doing.  ’I beseech you, therefore, brethren, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.’

The Apostle, in beginning his practical exhortations, lays as the foundations of them all two companion precepts:  one, with which we have to deal, affecting mainly the outward life; its twin sister, which follows in the next verse, affecting mainly the inward life.  He who has drunk in the spirit of Paul’s doctrinal teaching will present his body a living sacrifice, and be renewed in the spirit of his mind; and thus, outwardly and inwardly, will be approximating to God’s ideal, and all specific virtues will be his in germ.  Those two precepts lay down the broad outline, and all that follow in the way of specific commandments is but filling in its details.

I. We observe that we have here, first, an all-inclusive directory for the outward life.

Now, it is to be noticed that the metaphor of sacrifice runs through the whole of the phraseology of my text.  The word rendered ‘present’ is a technical expression for the sacerdotal action of offering.  A tacit contrast is drawn between the sacrificial ritual, which was familiar to Romans as well as Jews, and the true Christian sacrifice and service.  In the former a large portion of the sacrifices consisted of animals which were slain.  Ours is to be ’a living sacrifice.’  In the former the offering was presented to the Deity, and became His property.  In the Christian service, the gift passes, in like manner, from the possession of the worshipper, and is set apart for the uses of God, for that is the proper meaning of the word ‘holy.’  The outward sacrifice gave an odour of a sweet smell, which, by a strong metaphor, was declared to be fragrant in the nostrils of Deity.  In like manner, the Christian sacrifice is ’acceptable unto God.’  These other sacrifices were purely outward, and derived no efficacy from the disposition of the worshipper.  Our sacrifice, though the material of the offering be corporeal, is the act of the inner man, and so is called ‘rational’ rather than ‘reasonable,’ as our Version has it, or as in other parts of Scripture, ‘spiritual.’  And the last word of my text, ‘service,’ retains the sacerdotal allusion, because it does not mean the service of a slave or domestic, but that of a priest.

And so the sum of the whole is that the master-word for the outward life of a Christian is sacrifice.  That, again, includes two things—­self-surrender and surrender to God.