or censure of their fellows the approbation or censure of Jesus Christ.  That will take some cultivation.  It is a great deal easier to shape our courses so as to get one another’s praise.  I remember a quaint saying in a German book.  ’An old schoolmaster tried to please this one and that one, and it failed.  “Well, then,” said he, “I will try to please Christ.”  And that succeeded.’

And let me remind you that a second part of the concentration of effort which this aim requires is to strive with the utmost energy in the accomplishment of it.  Paul did not believe that anybody could please Jesus Christ without a fight for it.  His notion of acceptable service was service which a man suppressed much to render, and overcame much to bring.  And I urge upon you this, dear brethren, that with all the mob of faces round about us which shut out Christ’s face, and with all the temptations to follow other aims, and with the weaknesses of our own characters, it never was, is not, nor ever will be, an easy thing, or a thing to be done without a struggle and a dead lift, to live so as to be well-pleasing to Him.

Look at Paul’s metaphors with which he sets forth the Christian life—­a warfare, a race, a struggle, a building up of some great temple structure, and the like—­all suggesting at the least the idea of patient, persistent, continuous toil, and most of them suggesting also the idea of struggle with antagonistic forces and difficulties, either within or without.  So we must set our shoulders to the wheel, put our backs into our work.  Do not think that you are going to be carried into the condition of conformity with Jesus Christ in a dream, or that the road to heaven is a primrose path, to be trodden in silver slippers.  ’I will not offer unto the Lord that which doth cost me nothing,’ and if you do, it will be worth exactly what it costs.  There must be concentration of effort if we are to be well-pleasing to Him.

But then do not forget, on the other hand, that deeper than all effort, and the very spring and life of it, there must be the opening of our hearts for the entrance of His life and spirit, by the presence of which only are we well-pleasing to Christ.  That which pleases Him in you and me is our likeness to Him.  According to the old Puritan illustration, the refiner sat by the furnace until he could see in the molten metal his own face mirrored, and then he knew it was pure.  So what pleases Christ in us is the reflection of Himself.  And how can we get that likeness to Himself except by receiving into our hearts the Spirit that was in Christ Jesus, and will dwell in us, and will produce in us in our measure the same image that it formed in Him?  ‘Work out your own salvation,’ because ‘it is God that worketh in you.’  Labour, concentrate effort, and above all open the heart to the entrance of that transforming power.

III.  Lastly, let me suggest the utter insignificance to which this aim reduces all externals.