We need not bid for cloistered cell
Our neighbor and our work farewell,
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky;
The trifling round, the common task
Will furnish all we ought to ask,
Room to deny ourselves—a road
To bring us daily nearer God.”
If we allow the beauties of nature to raise our heart to God, we turn that into a sacrifice. If cross incidents, which could not be avoided or averted, are taken sweetly and lovingly, out of homage to the living will of God, this, too, is a sacrifice. If work be done in the full view of God’s assignment of our several tasks and spheres of labor, and under the consciousness of his presence, however secular in its character, it immediately becomes fit for presentation on the altar. If refreshment and amusement are so moderated as to help the spirit instead of dissipating it, if they are to be seasoned with the wholesome salt of self-denial (for every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt) they, too, become a holy oblation. If we study even perverse characters, with a loving hope and belief that we shall find something of God and Christ in them, which may be made the nucleus of better things, and instead of shutting ourselves up in a narrow sphere of sympathies, seek out and try to develop the good points of a generally uncongenial spirit; if we treat men as Christ treated them, counting that somewhere in every one there is a better mind, and the trace of God’s finger in creation, we may thus possibly sanctify an hour which would else be one of irksome constraint, and after which we might have been oppressed with a heavy feeling that it had been a wasted one. If a small trifle, destined to purchase some personal luxury or comfort, be diverted to a charitable and religious end, this is the regular and standing sacrifice of alms, recognized by the Scripture and the Liturgy. And finally, if we regard our time as, next to Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the most precious gift of God; if we gather up the fragments and interstices of it in a thrifty and religious manner, and employ them in some exercise of devotion or some good and useful work, this, too, becomes a tribute which God will surely accept with complacency, if laid upon his altar and united by faith and a devout intention with the one Sacrifice of our dear Lord.
Yes; if laid upon his altar; let us never forget or drop out of sight that proviso. It is the altar, and the altar alone, which sanctifieth the gift. Apart from Christ and his perfect sacrifice, an acceptable gift is an impossibility for man. For at best our gifts have in them the sinfulness of our nature; they are miserably flawed by defectiveness of motive, duplicity of aim, infirmity of will. “The prayers of all saints,” what force of interpretation must they have with God, if, as we are sure, “the effectual, fervent prayer of a” (single) “righteous man availeth much!” Yet when St. John saw in a vision “the prayers of all saints” offered “upon the golden altar which was before the throne,” it was in union with that which alone can perfume the tainted offsprings of even the regenerate man. “There was given unto him much increase, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne.”