What a glorious motto for a man--"_I live for God!_" It is religion's truest definition. It is the essence of angelic bliss--the motive-principle of angelic action; "Ye ministers of His, that do His pleasure." The Lord of angels knew no higher, no _other_ motive. It was, during His incarnation, the regulator and directory of His daily being. It supported Him amid the depressing sorrows of His woe-worn path. It upheld him in their awful termination in the garden and on the cross. For a moment, sinking human nature faltered under the load His Godhead sustained; but the thought of "pleasing God" nerved and revived Him. "Not my will, but _Thine_ be done." It is only when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, that this animating desire to "please Him" can exist. In the holy bosom of Jesus, that love reigned paramount, admitting no rival--no competing affection. Though infinitely inferior in degree, it is the same impelling principle which leads His people still to link enjoyment with His service, and which makes consecration to Him of heart and life its own best recompense and reward. "There is a gravitation," says one whose life was the holy echo of his words, "in the moral as in the physical world. When love to God is habitually in the ascendant, or occupying the place of will, it gathers round it all the other desires of the soul as satellites, and whirls them along with it in its orbit round the center of attraction." (_Hewitson's Life._) Till the heart, then, be changed, the believer can not have "this testimony that he _pleases God_." The world, self, sin--these be the gods of the unregenerate soul. And even _when_ changed, alas that there should be so many ebbings and flowings in our tide of devotedness! Jesus could say, "I do _always_ those things that please the Father." Glory to God burned within His bosom like a living fire. "Many waters could not quench it." His were no fitful and inconsistent frames and feelings, but the persistent habit of a holy life, which had the one end in view, from which it never diverged or deviated.