If you love the Lord Jesus, you will constantly aim and study to please him. With regard to any undecided course of action, you will not ask, "How will this please others?" but, "How will it please Christ?" Him whom your soul loveth, whatever the effect upon your neighbors, you will never be willing to displease. You would rather offend every friend you have on earth than the heavenly "Friend that sticketh closer than a brother." "Ye are my friends," saith he, "if ye do whatsoever I command you." And again he saith, "If any man love me, he will keep my words." Hearty obedience is the best proof of love. If you truly love him, your obedience will be prompt, earnest, constant, uniform, unquestioning and uncompromising. Try yourselves, my brethren, by this criterion. Is the word of Christ the supreme law of your life? In all things, do you seek his pleasure, and rejoice to do his will? Are his commandments grievous to you, or do you find his yoke easy and his burden light? Do you esteem his service a hard bondage, or the blessed freedom of the sons of God? Is it your meat and drink to do his will, as it was his to do the will of his Father? He is now challenging your affection, as Delilah challenged that of Samson: "How canst thou say, I love thee, when thy heart is not with me?" If you love the Lord Jesus, you will rejoice even in suffering for his sake. What was it but love stronger than death to him who died for them that made the apostles glory in tribulations, sing hymns of praise at midnight in their dungeons, wear their chains and manacles more proudly than princes ever wore their jewels, and welcome the scourge and the cross which completed their conformity to the divine Man of sorrows? And why did Ignatius chant so cheerfully among the lions, and Polycarp pour forth his thanksgiving so joyfully as he stood unbound in the flames? And why did so many Christians, in the early persecutions of the Church, rush to the tribunal to confess their faith in Christ, hastening to share the fiery coronation of their bishops and their brethren? There is but one answer to these questions; and if you love Christ as they loved him, you will be ready to make any sacrifice or endure any suffering for his glory. Like Moses, who "esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt," you will "choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." Like the Hebrew captives in Babylon, you will prefer the company of the king's lions to the society of his courtiers, and the sevenfold heat of the Chaldæan furnace to the perfumed breezes that regale the royal gardens. Hard sayings are these to ears like yours? Have you no sympathy, then, with the Prince of sufferers? Are you not ready to take up your cross, and follow him to Calvary? If not, how can you say, "We love him because he first loved us"?