and service to God, is brought out as at once a requirement and a characteristic of a Christian.  “What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness?”  “Be ye holy, for I am holy,” “as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.”  “God hath not called us to uncleanness but unto holiness.”  “Having these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”  And it is absolutely necessary that this grace should be cultivated if we would either fulfil the mission of our priesthood or abide in the Divine presence for ever.  Holiness is requisite whether to see the

Lord or to walk before men unto all well-pleasing; and as living witnesses, transcripts of His holiness, enabled by his grace to maintain purity of heart and life, God has promised to establish those who put their trust in Him.  Some Christians have been deterred from the search after this blessing of heaven by the mistakes of those who have endeavoured to expound it, or by the hypocrisy of those who have assumed its profession that they might the better sin.  It is marvellous how many different views of it have at times obtained currency in the world.  By some it has been resolved into a sort of refined Hinduism, a state in which the soul is “unearthed, entranced, beatified” by devout contemplation into a pietistic rapture; others have deemed that the best way to secure it was a retirement from the vexing world, a recreant forsaking of the active duties of life, as if it consisted in immunity from temptation rather than in victory over it.  Others have placed it in surpliced observance or in monastic vow; an equivocal regard to patterns of things in the heavens which common men mistake for idolatry.  Others again, reversing the old Pythagorean maxim, and wearing the image of God upon their ring, have expressed it by unworthy familiarity, a continual adverting to the gifts of

the spirit, and the experience of the soul in the flippancy of ordinary conversation, as did some of the fanatics of the Commonwealth.  Others have represented it as a perpetual austerity, an investiture of our family circles with all the hues of the sepulchre, and a flinging upon the face of society the frown of a rebuking fretfulness, which would make the good of an archangel evil spoken of in this censorious world.  But the scriptural holiness which believers long for, and which the Church is to spread through the land, is not a necessary adjunct of any or all of these.  It is not the acting of a part in a drama, but the forth-putting of a character in life, the exhibition in harmonious action of the humble love and filial fear with which men “work out their salvation.”  “A holy priesthood.”  It is remarkable of this spiritual priesthood that it descends in no particular succession, nor limits its privileges to any exclusive genealogy.  The holiness which is at once its distinctiveness and its hallowing comprehends and can sanctify all relations of life.  Let the minister have it, and the love of Christ, his supremest affection, will prompt his loathing of sin and his pity for sinners; will fire his zeal and make his words burn, and will often urge him to cast himself upon the mercy-seat that his labours may

not be in vain.  Let the merchant, or the manufacturer, or the man of business have it, and it need neither bate his diligence nor hold him back from riches; but it will smite down his avarice and restrain his greed of gold; it will make him abhor the fraud that is gainful, and eschew the speculation that is hazardous, and shrink from the falsehood that is customary, and check the competition that is selfish; and it will utterly destroy the deceptive hand-bill, and the cooked accounts, and the fictitious capital, as well the enormous dishonesties as the little lies of trade.  Let this holiness actuate the parent, and in his strong and gentle rule he will mould the hearts of his children heavenward, and train them in the admonition of the Lord, until, a commanded household, comely in their filial love, they shall reverence their Father who is in heaven.  Let the child be impressed with holiness, and he will have higher motives to obedience than he can gather from the constraint of duty or from the promptings of affection.  Let the master be holy, and while he upholds authority he will dispense blessing.  Let the servant be holy, and service will be rendered with cheerfulness, “not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.”  Let the man be holy, and vigorous health and

lofty intellect and swaying eloquence and quenchless zeal will all be offered to God.  Let the woman be holy, and patient prayer will linger round the cross, and ardent hope will haunt the envied sepulchre, and pitying tenderness will wail on the way to Calvary, and the deep heart-love will forget all selfish solicitudes in the absorbing question, “Where have they laid my Lord?”  Let the world be holy! and the millennium has come, and wrong ceases for ever, and the tabernacle of God is with men, and earth’s music rivals heaven’s.  Brethren, let us seek this blessing for ourselves.  There, at the foot of the Throne, let us plead the promise, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean.”  Imagination, intellect, memory, conscience, will;—sanctify them all.  “Then will we teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.”  It is done, surely it is done.  The hands are upon us now.  We kneel for the diviner baptism, for the effectual and blessed ordination.  Listen, the word has spoken, “Ye are an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”

II.—Certain blessings are presented to us in the text as the heritage of this spiritual and consecrated Church.  Increase and acceptance. 

The spiritual house is to be built up firm and consolidated on the true foundation.  The services of the holy priesthood are to be “acceptable to God through Jesus.”  Take the first thought.  “Ye are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”  The fact of God’s constant supervision over his Church and care for its stability and extension is one that is impressed with earnest repetition upon the pages of his word.  “Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken, but there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams.”  “Then shall thou see and flow together, and thine heart shall fear and be enlarged, because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.”  “Then shall the mountain of the Lord’s house be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.”  “As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all as with an ornament, and bind them on thee as a bride doeth.”  From these passages, and many others breathing the

same spirit, we may legitimately infer that it is the purpose of God that the kingdom of Messiah shall be universal; that the Church shall increase in steady and cumulative progression, and