1 Elizabeth Wordsworth, Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer, 212.
The First Things First.
*a
LITERATURE.
Alexander (S. A.), Christ and Scepticism, 109.
Cla\ ton (C), Stanhope Sermons, 127.
Davies (J. LI.), Social Questions, 154.
Ebright (II. K)., in Drew Sermons on the Golden Teds for 1010, 37.
Ev.ing (J. F.), The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 241.
Hare (J. C), Parish Sermons, i. 283.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermo7is, ii. 81.
Howard (H.), The Raiment of the Soul, 58.
Jackson (0.), The Teaching of Jesus, 129.
Jenkinson (A.), A Modern Disciple, 107.
Kingsley (C), Sermons for the Times, 167. iOV
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., iv. 550.
Mcllveen (J.), Christ and the Cliristian Life, 121.
Miller (G. A.), The Life Efficient, 39.
Miller (J.), Sermons, i. 37.
Porter (N.), Yale College Sermons, 268.
Reid (J.), The First Things of Jesus, 119.
Southouse (A. J.), The Men of the Beatitudes, 127.
Talbot (E. S.), Sermons at Southwark, 267.
Wardell (R. J.), Sermons in Homiletics, 116.
Williams (C. D.), A Valid Christianity for To- Day, 276.
Wilson (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Clifton College Chapel, ii. 7.
Woodhouse (F. C), The Life of the Soul, 262.
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Christian World Pulpit, xii. 164 (H. W. Beech er) ; lxi. 184 (F. W. Macdonald) ; lxxv. 300 (G. E. Darlaston) ; lxxxi. 156 (W. Mac- Mullen).
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The First Things First.
But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness ; and all these things shall be added unto you.— Matt. vi. 33.
There is no sentence which more distinctively expresses the mind of Jesus regarding the conduct of life than "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness." It gathers up everything into itself. It is His definition of the chief good which is within the reach of men. Many other words of His may be taken as ruling principles of life, but they are only parts of this simple and sublime utterance. It is the " secret of Jesus," the clue which He put into the hands of men to guide them through the labyrinth of life. Many of the deep-reaching principles of Jesus were spoken in opposition to those of the Scribes and Pharisees, but in this instance He passes beyond the ideas of any sect or class, and sets forth His thought of the chief aim of life in contrast to what was universally held then, and is also widely, if not universally, held now. In His moral perspective the desirable things of life are arranged in a startlingly new order, and with a surprisingly strong emphasis. He places first what men degrade to a very subordinate position. In the foreground, as men's highest and best good, He sets the quest for the Kingdom of God.
I.
The Kingdom of God.
Every man who would make life a success must have something that is always first for him. Now Jesus declared that the great first thing of life is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. " Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness."
1. The Kingdom of God and His righteousness is one of the
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160 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST
key-phrases of the gospel, and it is freely employed in many connexions. Christ takes it from the common stock of political phraseology, from which the men of His nation clothed their aspirations. In a theocracy the State adopts the language of the Church and advances identical claims. " The Kingdom of God," as the formula of Messianic politics, meant no more than a mere project of nationalist triumph. But Christ, in adopting the phrase, purged it of secularism, exalted it from the plane of politics to that of morals, and enlarged it until all the drama of human life could be gathered within its meaning. It stood for loyalty to the higher self, obedience to the Divine monitions of conscience, the pursuit of righteous ends, the self -dedication to spiritual service, the sustained crusade against evil within and without the man himself. Christ tells us that there is a true order of human endeavour, and that when that order is followed all the lesser concerns of human life find sufficient and unfailing guarantee. Make these your principal concern, and you lose the summum honum itself, and do not even secure them. " Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." He unrolls before us no alluring picture of reward, no Muhammadan Paradise of feasting and pleasure, but He tells us that we are the sons of the Most High, and bids us live as such.
Nor sang he only of unfading bowers,
Where they a tearless, painless age fulfil, In fields Elysian spending blissful hours,
Kemote from every ill ; But of pure gladness found in temperance high,
In duty owned, and reverenced with awe, Of man's true freedom, which may only lie
In servitude to law.
2. The Kingdom of God which we are to seek is a great ideal, under which all lesser aims must find their place ; it provides us with a great end of all action to which the plans and purposes of our daily lives are but means ; it informs our lives with a great principle by which all our acts are co-ordinated and to which they are relative. The word " kingdom " speaks of something wide, all-embracing, manifold, but with all its manifoldness made one by law, which impresses upon all its diverse elements the