"My boy, I have only two words for you--"Fear G.o.d, and never tell a lie.""
The boy started off, and towards evening he saw glittering in the distance the minarets of the great city. But between the city and himself he saw a cloud of dust. It came nearer. Presently he saw that it was a band of robbers.
One of the robbers left the rest and rode toward him, and said:
"Boy, what have you got?"
The boy looked him in the face said:
"I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat."
The robber laughed and wheeled around his horse and went away back. He would not believe the boy.
Presently another robber came and he said:
"Boy, what have you got?"
"Forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat."
The robber said: "The boy is a fool," and wheeled his horse and rode away back.
By and by the robber captain came and he said:
"Boy, what have you got?"
"I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat."
The robber dismounted, and put his hand over the boy"s breast, felt something round, counted one, two, three, four, five, till he counted out the forty golden coins. He looked the boy in the face and said:
"Why did you tell me that?
The boy said: "Because of G.o.d and my mother."
The robber leaned on his spear and thought and said:
"Wait a moment."
He mounted his horse, rode back to the rest of the robbers, and came back in about five minutes with his dress changed. This time he looked not like a robber, but like a merchant. He took the boy up on his horse and said:
"My boy, I have long wanted to do something for my G.o.d and for my mother, and I have this moment renounced my robber"s life. I am also a merchant. I have a large business house in the city. I want you to come and live with me, to teach me about your G.o.d; and you will be rich, and your mother some day will come and live with us."
And it all happened. By seeking first the Kingdom of G.o.d, all these things were added unto him.
Boys, banish forever from your minds the idea that religion is _subtraction_. It does not tell us to give things up, but rather gives us something so much better that they give themselves up. When you see a boy on the street whipping a top, you know, perhaps, that you could not make that boy happier than by giving him a top, a whip, and half an hour to whip it. But next birthday, when he looks back he says,
"What a goose I was last year to be delighted with a top. What I want now is a baseball bat."
Then when he becomes an old man, he does not care in the least for a baseball bat; he wants rest, and a snug fireside and a newspaper every day. He wonders how he could ever have taken up his thoughts with baseball bats and whipping-tops.
Now, when a boy becomes a Christian, he grows out of the evil things one by one--that is to say, if they are really evil--which he used to set his heart upon; (of course I do not mean baseball bats, for they are not evils); and so instead of telling people to give up things, we are safer to tell them to "seek first the Kingdom of G.o.d," and then they will get new things and better things, and
THE OLD THINGS WILL DROP OFF
of themselves. This is what is meant by the "new heart." It means that G.o.d puts into us new thoughts and new wishes, and we become quite different.
III.
Lastly, and very shortly. What was the third head? "Grammar." Right.
Now, I require a clever boy to answer the next question. What is the verb? "Seek." Very good: "seek." What mood is it in? "Imperative mood." What does that mean? "A command." What is the soldier"s first lesson? "Obedience." Have you obeyed this command? Remember the imperative mood of these words, "_Seek_ first the Kingdom of G.o.d."
This is the command of your King. It _must_ be done. I have been trying to show you what a splendid thing it is; what a reasonable thing it is; what a happy thing it is; but beyond all these reasons, it is a thing that _must_ be done, because we are _commanded_ to do it by our Captain. Now, there is His command to seek _first_ the Kingdom of G.o.d. Have you done it?
"Well," I know some boys will say, "we are going to have a good time, enjoy life, and then we are going to seek--_last_--the Kingdom of G.o.d."
Now, that is mean; it is nothing else than mean for a boy to take all the good gifts that G.o.d has given him, and then give him nothing back in return but
HIS WASTED LIFE.
G.o.d wants boys" _lives_, not only their souls. It is for active service that soldiers are drilled, and trained, and fed, and armed.
That is why you and I are in the world at all--not to prepare to go out of it some day, but to serve G.o.d actively in it _now_. It is monstrous, and shameful, and cowardly to talk of seeking the Kingdom _last_. It is shirking duty, abandoning one"s rightful post, playing into the enemy"s hand by doing nothing to turn his flank. Every hour a Kingdom is coming in your heart, in your home, in the world near you, be it a Kingdom of Darkness or a Kingdom of Light. You are placed where you are, in a particular business, in a particular street, to help on there the Kingdom of G.o.d. You cannot do that when you are old and ready to die. By that time your companions will have fought their fight, and lost or won. If they lose, will you not be sorry that you did not help them? Will you not regret that only at the last you helped the Kingdom of G.o.d? Perhaps you will not be able to do it then. And then your life has been lost indeed.
Very few people have the opportunity to seek the Kingdom of G.o.d at the end. Christ, knowing all that, knowing that religion was a thing for our life, not merely for our death-bed, has laid this command upon us now: "Seek _first_ the Kingdom of G.o.d."
I am going to leave you with this text itself. Every boy in the world should obey it.
Boys, before you go to work to-morrow, before you go to sleep to-night, resolve that, G.o.d helping you, you are going to seek _first_ the Kingdom of G.o.d. Perhaps some boys here are deserters; they began once before to serve Christ, and they deserted. Come back again, come back again today! Others have never enlisted at all. Will you not do it now? You are old enough to decide. The grandest moment of a boy"s life is that moment when he decides to "_Seek first the Kingdom of G.o.d_."
THE CHANGED LIFE:
THE GREATEST NEED OF THE WORLD.
G.o.d is all for quality; man is for quant.i.ty. The immediate need of the world at this moment is not more of us, but, if I may use the expression, a better brand of us. To secure ten men of an improved type would be better than if we had ten thousand more of the average Christians distributed all over the world. There is such a thing in the evangelistic sense as winning the whole world and losing our own soul. And the first consideration is our own life--our own spiritual relations to G.o.d--our own likeness to Christ. And I am anxious, briefly, to look at the right and the wrong way of becoming like Christ--of becoming better men: the right and the wrong way of sanctification.
Let me begin by naming, and in part discarding, some processes in vogue already for producing better lives. These processes are far from wrong; in their place they may even be essential. One ventures to disparage them only because they do not turn out the most perfect possible work.
I. The first imperfect method is to rely on
RESOLUTION.
In will power, in mere spasms of earnestness, there is no salvation.
Struggle, effort, even agony, have their place in Christianity, as we shall see; but this is not where they come in.