What do I mean? I mean this--that there are three sacrifices which every
man, woman, and child can offer, and should offer, however lowly, however
uneducated in what the world calls education nowadays. Those they can
offer to God, and with them they can worship God, and render to God the
things which are God's, wherever they are, whatever they are doing,
whatever be the laws of their country, or the state of society round
them. For of these sacrifices our Lord Himself said, The true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the
Father seeketh such to worship Him.
Now what are these spiritual sacrifices?
First and foremost, surely, the sacrifice of repentance, of which it is
written, "The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit. A broken and a
contrite heart, oh God, Thou wilt not despise." Surely when we--even the
best of us--look back on our past lives; when we recollect, if not great
and positive sins and crimes, yet the opportunities which we have
neglected; the time, and often the money which we have wasted; the
meannesses, the tempers, the spite, the vanity, the selfishness, which we
have too often indulged--When we think of what we have been, and what we
might have been, what we are, and what we might be; when we measure
ourselves, not by the paltry, low, and often impure standard of the world
around us, but by the pure, lofty, truly heroical standard of our Lord
Jesus Christ--what can we say, but that we are miserable--that is,
pitiful and pitiable sinners, who have left undone what we ought to have
done, and done that which we ought not to have done, till there is no
health in us?
And if you ask me, How is it a sacrifice to God to confess to Him that we
are sinners? the answer is simple.
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