II.
I pass, therefore, to the second head; What was it? Arithmetic. Are there any arithmetic words in this text? "Added." What other arithmetic words? "First."
Now, don't you think you could not have anything better to seek "first" than the things I have named to do what is right, to live at peace, and be always making those about you happy? You see at once why Christ tells us to seek these things first--because they are
THE BEST WORTH SEEKING.
Do you know anything better than these three things, anything happier, purer, nobler? If you do, seek them first. But if you do not, seek first the Kingdom of God. I do not tell you to be religious. You know that. I do not tell you to seek the Kingdom of God. I tell you to seek the Kingdom of God _first_. _First._ Not many people do that. They put a little religion into their life--once a week, perhaps. They might just as well let it alone. It is not worth seeking the Kingdom of God unless we seek it _first_.
Suppose you take the helm out of a ship and hang it over the bow, and send that ship to sea, will it ever reach the other side? Certainly not. It will drift about anyhow. Keep religion in its place, and it will take you straight through life and straight to your Father in heaven when life is over. But if you do not put it in its place, you may just as well have nothing to do with it. Religion out of its place in a human life is the most miserable thing in the world. There is nothing that requires so much to be kept in its place as religion, and its place is what? second? third? "First." Boys, _first_ the Kingdom of God; make it so that it will be natural to you to think about that the very first thing.
There was a boy in Glasgow apprenticed to a gentleman who made telegraphs. (The gentleman told me this himself.) One day this boy was up on the top of a four-story house with a number of men fixing up a telegraph wire. The work was all but done. It was getting late, and the men said they were going away home, and the boy was to nip off the ends of the wire himself. Before going down they told him to be sure to go back to the workshop, when he was finished, with his master's tools.
"Do not leave any of them lying about, whatever you do," said the foreman.
The boy climbed up the pole and began to nip off the ends of the wire. It was a very cold winter night, and the dusk was gathering. He lost his hold and fell upon the slates, slid down, and then over and over to the ground below. A clothes-rope stretched across the "green" on to which he was just about to fall, caught him on the chest and broke his fall; but the shock was terrible, and he lay unconscious among some clothes upon the green.
An old woman came out; seeing her rope broken and the clothes all soiled, thought the boy was drunk, shook him, scolded him, and went for the policeman. The boy with the shaking came back to consciousness, rubbed his eyes, and got upon his feet. What do you think he did? He staggered, half-blind, up the stairs. He climbed the ladder. He got on to the roof of the house. He gathered up his tools, put them into his basket, took them down, and when he got to the ground again fainted dead away.
Just then the policeman came, saw there was something seriously wrong, and carried him away to the hospital, where he lay for some time. I am glad to say he got better.
What was his first thought at that terrible moment? His duty. He was not thinking of himself; he was thinking about his master. First, the Kingdom of God.
But there is another arithmetic word. What is it? "Added."
You know the difference between _addition_ and _subtraction_. Now, that is
A VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE
in religion, because--and it is a very strange thing--very few people know the difference when they begin to talk about religion. They often tell boys that if they seek the Kingdom of God, everything else is going to be _subtracted_ from them. They tell them that they are going to become gloomy, miserable, and will lose everything that makes a boy's life worth living--that they will have to stop baseball and story-books, and become little old men, and spend all their time in going to meetings and in singing hymns.
Now, that is not true. Christ never said anything like that. Christ said we are to "Seek first the Kingdom of God," and
EVERYTHING ELSE WORTH HAVING
is to be _added_ unto us. If there is anything I would like you to remember, it is these two arithmetic words--"first" and "added."
I do not mean by "added" that if you become religious you are all going to become _rich_. Here is a boy, who, in sweeping out the shop tomorrow, finds a quarter lying among the orange boxes. Well, nobody has missed it. He puts it in his pocket, and it begins to burn a hole there. By breakfast time he wishes that money were in his master's pocket. And by-and-by he goes to his master. He says (to _himself_, and not to his master), "I was at the Boys' Brigade yesterday, and I was told to seek _first_ that which was right." Then he says to his master:
"Please, sir, here is a quarter that I found upon the floor."
The master puts it in the till. What has the boy got in his pocket? Nothing; _but he has got the Kingdom of God in his heart_. He has laid up treasure in heaven, which is of infinitely more worth than the quarter.
Now, that boy does not find a dollar on his way home. I have known that happen, but that is not what is meant by "adding." It does not mean that God is going to pay him in his own coin, for He pays in better coin.
Yet I remember once hearing of a boy who was paid in both ways. He was very, very poor. He lived in a foreign country, and his mother said to him one day that he must go into the great city and start in business, and she took his coat and cut it open and sewed between the lining and the coat forty golden dinars, which she had saved up for many years to start him in life. She told him to take care of robbers as he went across the desert; and as he was going out of the door she said:
"My boy, I have only two words for you--'Fear God, 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 God 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 God 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 God; 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 God, 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 God," 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 God puts into us new thoughts and new wishes, and we become quite different.