A Father-pleasing Life.


The second trait in His upward relation was this--He chose to live _a
Father-pleasing life_. I use those words because He used them.[10] I might
say "consecrated" or "dedicated" or "surrendered" or other like words. And
these are good words, but in common use we have largely lost their
meaning. They are used unthinkingly for something less--much less--than
they mean. Perhaps if we use the phrase He used we may be able to get back
to the thing He meant, and did.

There are three possible lives open to every man's choice: a bad life, in
which selfishness or passion or both, either refined or coarse, rule; a
good, true, natural life; and a Father-pleasing life. By a good, true,
natural life I mean, just now, a really Christian life in all that that
means, but lived as if there were no emergency in the world to change
one's habit of life.

You know an emergency coming into a man's life makes radical changes. You
go to bed tonight and ordinarily will sleep out your eight hours in
comfort and quiet. If a fire break out in the house, you are up in the
middle of the night, hurrying around, only partly clad, carrying out
valuables, or helping turn on water, or something of this sort. Your
natural arrangements for the night are all broken up by the fire. An
emergency may make radical changes in one's life for a little time,
sometimes for the whole life. Financial reverses may change the whole
habit of one's life.

Here's a man who has a well-assured, good-sized income from his business,
or his inheritance, or both. He lives in a luxuriously appointed home,