member of the church, I don’t see how I can ever take any public part in the religious meetings. If I could only decide whether God required this of me, I think my way would be clear.” I said to him, “My brother, you are not called on to settle that question now. You have no means of deciding it. You had better drop it altogether for the present. God has promised that if you will commit your ways unto him he will direct you. Now I believe you sincerely want to do God’s will, and that you are ready, whenever he shall show it you, to pledge yourself to do your duty. Leave the matter there; and if, at any time, this duty should be thrust upon you, do it in God’s name and strength.” He soon after joined the church, and has borne himself since with a fidelity and devotion which speak well for the thoroughness of the work of grace in him. Now this is what the apostle means by a _living_ sacrifice. This spirit of consecration infused into sacrifice fills it with life. The sacrifice becomes “living” only when self dies; when the man says “Here Lord, I give myself away: ’Tis all that I can do.” The other method of securing nonconformity to the world by acting for the mere sake of difference or according to circumstances, constitutes a dead sacrifice. Such were the sacrifices of the Pharisees. They thanked God they were not as other men; but the difference was but outward. To the spectator’s eye they were not conformed to the world. They did not dress like it. Their prayers were longer and more frequent. They did not eat with publicans and sinners. But these differences had become the chief end of their religious life. Their development was like arranging the limbs of a corpse for exhibition. They were not the natural, spontaneous outgrowths of a living inward principle; and hence the Pharisees have passed into history as the representative hypocrites of all time.