If you can say, 'To me to live is Christ,'
you will have no difficulty in saying, 'and to die is gain.' That is
the only way by which you can come to such a temper, and then you
will be willing to move from the cottage to the palace, and to wait
in peace till you are shifted again into 'the building of God, the
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'

PLEASING CHRIST

'We labour that whether present or absent we may be
accepted of Him.'--2 COR. v. 2.

We do not usually care very much for, or very much trust, a man's own
statement of the motives of his life, especially if in the statement
he takes credit for lofty and noble ones. And it would be rather a
dangerous experiment for the ordinary run of so-called Christian
people to stand up and say what Paul says here, that the supreme
design and aim towards which all their lives are directed is to
please Jesus Christ. In his case the tree was known by its fruits.
Certainly there never was a life of more noble self-abnegation, of
more continuous heroism, of loftier aspiration and lowlier service
than the life of which we see the very pulse in these words.

But Paul is not only professing his own faith, he is speaking in the
name of all his brethren. 'We,' ought to include every man and woman
who calls himself or herself a Christian. It is this setting of the
will of Jesus Christ high up above all other commandments, and
proposing to one's self as the aim that swallows up all other aims,
that I may please Him--it is this, and not creeds, forms, opinions,
professions, or even a faith that simply trusts in Him for salvation,
that makes a true Christian. You are a Christian in the precise
measure in which Christ's will is uppermost and exclusive in your
life, and for all your professions and your orthodoxy and your
worship and your faith, not one hair's-breadth further. Here is the
signature and the common characteristic of all real Christians, 'We
labour that whether present or absent we may be well-pleasing to
Him.'

So then in looking together at these words now, I take three points,
the supreme aim of the Christian life; the concentration of effort
which that aim demands; and the insignificance to which it reduces
all external things.

I. First, then, let me deal with that supreme aim of the Christian
life.

The word which is, correctly enough, rendered 'accepted,' may more
literally, and perhaps with a closer correspondence to the Apostl