3. Grateful love to Christ will also be produced by this remembrance. Love to Christ is a principle essential to personal religion, and without it we are nothing. But our hearts are so constituted that love cannot be excited in them by any commands however authoritative, or by any threatenings however terrible. We cannot love an object unless we perceive that it is lovely; nor can we love Christ unless we perceive the loveliness of his person and character. And this perception is derived from reflection and remembrance. While we are musing the fire begins to burn; and when we remember the great love with which he loved us, when he gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, that love excites and constrains our own, and “we love him because he first loved us.” When we thus begin by loving him for what he has done for us, we go on to perfection by loving him for what he is, the noblest and the purest love our hearts can cherish. And as love always assimilates to its object, and blesses the heart which it inspires, so love to Christ conforms us to his character, and becomes a fruitful source of joy and peace. The Spirit takes of the things which are Christ’s and shews them to us with increased clearness and impressiveness, so that “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory.” 4. Nor can we thus remember Christ, and thereby feel the constraining influences of his love, without manifesting devout subjection to his authority, and practical conformity to his example. The great and pervading principle of his mind was evidently a spirit of obedience and submission to his Father’s will. “I am come,” said he, “not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.” “My meat is to do his will.” “Father, not my will but thine be done.” How perfectly and perseveringly were these sayings exhibited in his daily life; and how precious and powerful does his example become to those who endeavour to have these things always in remembrance. And shall it not be so with us? Shall we, his disciples, pursue any course but that which is marked by his footsteps? Shall we remember Christ and love the world, and comply with temptation, and neglect watchfulness and prayer, and carefully avoid self denial, and follow our own inclinations rather than his commands, and feel ashamed of making a public profession of his gospel? Oh, no! Holy Jesus, no! We would ardently cling to thy cross, but we would also humbly bow beneath thy sceptre. And while we do this in remembrance of thee, we would thankfully acknowledge that we are not our own; that we have been bought with the price of thy precious blood; and that we are under infinite obligations to glorify thee in our body and our spirit which are thine.