nt--unless the context distinctly forbids it--means Jesus
Christ. Here the context distinctly demands it. For only a sentence or
two before, the Apostle has been speaking about 'those who were sometime
darkness having been made light in the Lord'--which is obviously in
Jesus Christ.

And here, therefore, what pleases _Christ_ is the Christian's highest
duty, and the one prescription which is required to be obeyed in order
to walk in the light is, to do that which pleases Him.

I. So, then, in these brief words, so comprehensive, and going so deep
into the secrets of holy and noble living, I want you to notice that we
have, first, the only attitude which corresponds to our relations to
Christ.

How remarkable it is that this Apostle should go on the presumption that
our conduct affects Him, that it is possible for us to please, or to
displease Jesus Christ now. We often wonder whether the beloved dead are
cognisant of what we do; and whether any emotions of something like
either our earthly complacency or displeasure, can pass across the
undisturbed calm of their hearts, if they are aware of what their loved
ones here are doing. That question has to be left very much in the dark,
however our hearts may sometimes seek to enforce answers. But this we
know, that that loving Lord, not merely by the omniscience of His
divinity, but by the perpetual knowledge and sympathy of His perfect
manhood, is not only cognizant of, but is affected by, the conduct of
His professed followers here on earth. And since it is true that He now
is not swept away into some oblivious region where the dead are, but is
close beside us all, cognizant of every act, watching every thought, and
capable of having something like a shadow of a pang passing across the
Divine depth of His eternal joy and repose at the right hand of God,
then, surely, the only thing that corresponds to such a relationship as
at present subsists between the Christian soul and the Lord is that we
should take as our supreme and continual aim that, 'whether present or
absent, we should be well-pleasing to Him.' Nor does that demand rest
only upon the realities of our present relation to that Lord, but it
goes back to the past facts on which our present relation rests. And the
only fitting response to what He has been and done for us is that we
should, each of us, in the depth of our hearts, and in the widest
circumference of the surface of our lives, enthrone Him as absolute
L