ord, and take His good pleasure as our supreme law. Jesus Christ is
King because He is Redeemer. The only adequate response to what He has
done for me is that I should absolutely submit myself to Him, and say to
Him, 'O Lord! truly I am Thy servant! Thou hast loosed my bonds.' The
one fitting return to make for that Cross and Passion is to enthrone His
will upon my will, and to set Him as absolute Monarch over the whole of
my nature. Thoughts, affections, purposes, efforts, and all should crown
Him King, because He has died for me. The conduct which corresponds to
the relations which we bear to Christ as the present Judge of our work,
and the Redeemer of our souls by His mighty deed in the past, is this of
my text, to make my one law His will, and to please Him that hath called
me to be His soldier.

The meaning of being a Christian is that, in return for the gift of a
whole Christ, I give my whole self to Him. 'Why call ye me Lord! Lord!
and do not the things which I say?' If He is what He assuredly is to
every one of us, nothing can be plainer than that we are thereby bound
by obligations which are not iron, but are more binding than if they
were, because they were woven out of the cords of love and the bands of
a man, bound to serve Him supremely, Him only, Him always, Him by the
suppression of self, and the making His pleasure our law.

II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to notice that we have here the
all-sufficient guide for practical life.

It sounds very mystical, and a trifle vague, to say, Do everything to
please Jesus Christ. It is all-comprehensive; it is mystical in the
sense that it goes down below the mere surface of prescriptions about
conduct. But it is not vague, and it is capable of immediate application
to every part, and to every act, of every man's life.

For what is it that pleases Jesus Christ? His own likeness; as,
according to the old figure--which is, I suppose, true to spiritual
facts, whether to external facts or not--the refiner knows that the
metal is ready to flow when he can see his own face in it. Jesus Christ
desires most that we should all be like Him. That we are to bear His
image is as comprehensive, and at the same time as specific, a way of
setting forth the sum of Christian duty, as are the words of my text.
The two phrases mean the same thing.

And what is the likeness to Jesus Christ which it is thus our supreme
obligation and our truest wisdom and perfection to bear? Well!