And again: "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up, a spiritual house,
an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
by Jesus Christ." Precisely. If we are priests, we must perform the
functions of a priest, and one of these functions is the offering of
sacrifice. What, then, are the sacrifices which are to be offered by
the Christian Priest? Certainly, not any expiatory or meritorious
sacrifices. These are, forever, precluded by the fact that Christ hath
offered one sacrifice for sins forever. Nothing can be added to, and
nothing can be subtracted from, that infinite and all-sufficient
offering.

The first sacrifice to be made by the Christian priest is the surrender
of his own body, with all its appetites, organs and capabilities, to
God. Listen to Paul.

"I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service." Your bodies, because if you are
Christians, you have already presented your hearts; your bodies,
because through the body, too often temptation enters into the soul and
leads it to actual sin. Your bodies, because of their wonderful
mechanism and their equally wonderful activities. If surrendered to the
Lord, He makes them the very thing they were originally designed to
be, namely, the obedient servants of the soul, and the soul is already
His own obedient servant, so that when the soul commands and the body
obeys, both are working for God, and when the soul says Go, and the
body runs hither and thither, both are going upon God's errands.

It will be observed that the body is to be presented a living
sacrifice, not a dead one. All its boundless activities are to be given