If we look at any Old Testament text about consecration, we shall see that the marginal reading of the word is, 'fill the hand' (_e. g._ Ex. xxviii. 41; 1 Chron. xxix. 5). Now, if our hands are full of 'other things,' they cannot be filled with 'the things that are Jesus Christ's'; there must be emptying before there can be any true filling. So if we are sorrowfully seeing that our hands have not been kept for Jesus, let us humbly begin at the beginning, and ask Him to empty them thoroughly, that He may fill them completely. For they _must_ be emptied. Either we come to our Lord willingly about it, letting Him unclasp their hold, and gladly dropping the glittering weights they have been carrying, or, in very love, He will have to force them open, and wrench from the reluctant grasp the 'earthly things' which are so occupying them that He cannot have His rightful use of them. There is only one other alternative, a terrible one,--to be let alone till the day comes when not a gentle Master, but the relentless king of terrors shall empty the trembling hands as our feet follow him out of the busy world into the dark valley, for 'it is certain we can carry nothing out.' Yet the emptying and the filling are not all that has to be considered. Before the hands of the priests could be filled with the emblems of consecration, they had to be laid upon the emblem of atonement (Lev. viii. 14, etc.). That came first. 'Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the bullock for the sin-offering.' So the transference of guilt to our Substitute, typified by that act, must precede the dedication of ourselves to God. 'My faith would lay her hand On that dear head of Thine, While like a penitent I stand, And there confess my sin.' The blood of that Holy Substitute was shed 'to make reconciliation upon the altar.' Without that reconciliation we cannot offer and present ourselves to God; but this being made, Christ Himself presents us. And you, that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight. Then Moses 'brought the ram for the burnt-offering; and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram, and Moses burnt the whole ram upon the altar; it was a burnt-offering for a sweet savour, and an offering made by fire unto the Lord.' Thus Christ's offering was indeed a whole one, body, soul, and spirit, each and all suffering even unto death. These atoning sufferings, accepted by God for us, are, by our own free act, accepted by us as the ground of our acceptance.