Now, St. John felt out truth. He understood his Lord by loving Him. You find no long trains of argument in St. John's writings; an atmosphere of contemplation pervades all. Brief, full sentences, glowing with imagery of which the mere prose intellect makes nonsense, and which a warm heart alone interprets, that is the character of his writing; very different from the other apostles. St. Peter's knowledge of Christ was formed by impetuous mistakes, corrected slowly and severely. St. Paul's Christianity was formed by principles wrought out glowing hot, as a smith hammers out ductile iron, in his unresting earnest fire of thought, where the Spirit dwelt in warmth and light forever, kindling the Divine fire of inspiration. St. John and St. John's Christianity were formed by personal view of Christ, intercourse with Him, and silent contemplation. Slowly, month by month and year by year, he gazed on Christ in silence, and thoughtful adoration. "Reflecting as from a glass the glory of the Lord," he became like Him: caught His tones, His modes of thought, His very expressions, and became partaker of His inward life. A "Christ was formed in him.” Hence it was that this prayer was revealed to St. John alone of the apostles, and by him alone recorded for us. The Saviour's mind touched his; through secret sympathy he was inspired with the mystic consciousness of what had passed and what was passing in the deeps of the soul of Christ. Its secret longings and its deepest struggles were known to John alone. This particular sentence in the prayer which I have taken for the text was peculiarly after the heart of the Apostle John. For I have said that to him the true life of Christ was rather the inner Life than the outward acts of life. Now, this sentence from the lips of Jesus speaks of the Atoning Sacrifice as an inward. mental act rather than as an outward deed; a selfconsecration wrought out in the Will of Christ. For their sakes I am sanctifying myself. That is a resolve, a secret of the inner Life. No wonder it was recorded by St. John. The text has two parts. I. The sanctification of Jesus Christ. "For their 1. Christ's sanctification of Himself. sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." We must explain this word "sanctify;" upon it the whole meaning turns. Clearly, it has not the ordinary popular sense here of making holy. Christ was holy. He could not, by an inward effort or struggle, make Himself holy, for He was that already. Let us trace the history of the word "sanctify" in the early pages of the Jewish history. When the destroying angel smote the first-born of the Egyptian families, the symbolic blood on the lintei of every Hebrew house protected the eldest born from the plague of death. In consequence, a law of Moses viewed every eldest son in a peculiar light. He was reckoned as a thing devoted to the Lord, redeemed, and therefore set apart. The word used to express this devotion is sanctify. "The Lord said unto Moses, Sanctify unto me all the first-born, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine." By a subsequent arrangement these first-born were exchanged for the Levites. Instead of the eldest son in each family, a whole tribe was taken, and reckoned as set apart and devoted to Jehovah, just as now a sub stitute is provided to serve in war in another's stead. Therefore, the tribe of Levi were said to be sanctified to God. Ask we what was meant by saying that the Levites were sanctified to God? The ceremony of their sanctification will explain it to us. It was a very significant one. The priest touched with the typical blood of a sacrificed animal the Levite's right hand, right eye, right foot. This was the Levite's sanctification. It devoted every faculty and every power, of seeing, doing, walking, the right-hand faculties, the best and choicest, to God's peculiar service. He was a man set apart. To sanctify, therefore, in the Hebrew phrase, meant to devote or consecrate. Let us pause for a few moments to gather up the import of this ceremony of the Levites. The first-born are a nation's hope; they may be said to represent a whole nation. The consecration, therefore, of the first-born, was the consecration of the entire nation by their representatives. Now, the Levites were substituted for the first-born. The Levites consequently represented all Israel, and by their consecration the life of Israel was declared to be in idea and by right a consecrated life to God. But further still. As the Levites represented Israel, so Israel itself was but a part taken for the whole, and represented the whole human race. If any one thinks this fanci ful, let him remember the principle of representation on which the whole Jewish system was built. For ex amp.e the first-fruits of the harvest were consecrated to God. Why? To declare that portion, and that only, to be God's? No; St. Paul says, as a part for the whole, to teach and remind that the whole harvest was His. "If the first-fruits be holy, the lump also is holy." So, in the same way, God consecrated a peculiar people to Himself. Why? The Jews say, because they alone are His. We say, as a part representative of the whole, to show in one nation what all are meant to be. The holiness of Israel is a representative holiness. Just as the consecrated Levite stood for what Israel was meant to be, so the anointed and separated nation represents forever what the whole race of man is in the Divine Idea, a thing whose proper life is perpetual consecration. One step further. This being the true life of Humanity, name it how you will,-sanctification, consecration, devotion, sacrifice,— Christ, the Representative of the Race, submits Himself in the text to the universal law of this devotion. The true law of every life is consecration to God; therefore Christ says, I consecrate myself; else He had not been a Man in God's idea of manhood, for the idea of Man which God had been for ages laboring to give through a consecrated tribe and a consecrated nation to the world, was the idea of a being whose life-law is sacrifice, every act and every thought being devoted to God. Accordingly, this is the view which Christ Himself gave of His own Divine Humanity. He spoke of it as of a thing devoted by a Divine decree. "Say ye of Him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" We have reached, therefore, the meaning of this word in the text, For their sakes I sanctify, that is, consecrate or devote myself. The first meaning of sanctify is to set apart. But to set apart for God is to devote or consecrate; and to consecrate a thing is to make it holy. And thus we have the three meanings of the word,—namely, to set apart, to devote, to make holy, -rising all out of one simple idea. To go somewhat into particulars. This sanctification is spoken of here chiefly as three-fold: Self-devotion by inward resolve self-devotion to the Truthself-devotion for the sake of others. 1. He devoted Himself by inward resolve. "I sanctify myself." God His Father had devoted Him before. He had sanctified and sent Him. It only remained that this devotion should become by His own act self-devotion — completed by His own will. Now, in that act of will consisted His sanctification of Himself. For, observe, this was done within; in secret, solitary struggle in wrestling with all temptations which deterred Him from His work-in resolve to do it unflinchingly; in real human battle and victory. : Therefore this self-sanctification applies to the whole tone and history of His mind. He was forever devot ing Himself to work-forever bracing His human spirit to sublime resolve. But it applies peculiarly to certain special moments, when some crisis, as on this present occasion, came, which called for an act of will. The first of these moments which we read of came when he was twelve years of age. We pondered on it a few weeks ago. In the temple, that earnest conversation with the doctors indicates to us that He had begun to revolve His own mission in His mind; for |