who is living in absence from anyone he loves.  What happens when we are living separated from some one we love?  This happens:  that his image is continually in our minds.  At the most unexpected times that image rises, and especially, if we are proposing to ourselves to do what that person would not approve.  At once his image rises to rebuke us and to hold us back.  So that it is not only possible to carry with us the image of Christ:  it is absolutely certain that we shall carry that image with us if only we give Him that love and reverence which is due from every human being.  Who has done for us what Christ has done?  Who commands our reverence as He does?  If once He gets hold of our affection, it is impossible that He should not live constantly in our hearts.  And if we say that persons deeply immersed in business cannot carry Christ with them thus, remember what He Himself says:  “If any man love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him.”  So that He is most present with the busiest and with those who strive as best they can to keep His commandments.

But we must not only associate with Christ and make Him our constant company:  we must, in the second place, set ourselves square with Christ.  You know that if you look into a mirror obliquely, if a mirror is not set square with you, you do not see yourself, but what is at the opposite angle, something that is pleasant or something that is disagreeable to you; it matters not—­you cannot see yourself.  And unless we as mirrors set ourselves perfectly square with Christ, we do not reflect Him, but perhaps things that are in His sight monstrous.  And, in point of fact, that is what happens with most of us, because it is here that we are chiefly tried.  All persons brought up within the Christian Church pay some attention to Christ.  We too well understand His excellence and we too well understand the advantages of being Christian men not to pay some attention to Christ.  But that will not make us conform to His image.  In order to be conformed to the image of Christ we must be wholly His.  Suppose you enter a studio where a sculptor is working, will he hand you his hammer and chisel to finish the most difficult piece of his work or to do any part of it?  Assuredly not.  It is his own idea that he is working out, and none but his own hand can work it out.  So with us who are to be moulded by Christ.  Christ cannot mould us into His image unless we are wholly His.  Every stroke that is made upon us by the chisel and mallet of the world is lost to His ideal.  As often as we reflect what is not purely Christian, so often do we mar the I image of Christ.