and bought the pearl.  Ah, friends, there is a great deal that has to be given up:  the world, its pleasures, its favor, its good opinion.  You are to stand to the world in the same relation as Jesus did.  The world rejected Him, and cast Him out, and you are to take up the position of your Lord, to whom you belong, and to follow with the rejected Christ.  You have to give up everything.  You have to give up all that is good in yourself and to be humbled in the dust of death.  And that is not all.  Your past religious life and experience and successes—­you have to give all up and become nothing, that God alone may have the glory.  God has brought you out in conversion; it was God’s own life given you:  but you defiled it with disobedience and with unbelief.  Give it all up.  Give up all your own wisdom, and your own thoughts about God’s work.  How hard it is for the minister of the Gospel to give up all his wisdom, and to lay it at the feet of Jesus, to become a fool and to say:  “Lord, I know nothing as I should know it.  I have been preaching the Gospel, and how little I have seen of the glory of the blessed land, and the blessed life!”

Why is it that the blessed Spirit can not teach us more effectually?  No reason but this:  the wisdom of man prevents it; the wisdom of man prevents the light of God from shining in.  And so we could say of other things; give up all.  Some may have an individual sin to give up.  There may be a Christian man who is angry with his brother.  There may be a Christian woman who has quarreled with her neighbor.  There may be friends who are not living as they should.  There may be Christians holding fast some little doubtful thing, not willing to surrender and leave behind the whole of the wilderness life and lust.  Oh, do take this step and say:  “I am ready to give up everything to have this pearl of great price; my time, my attention, my business, I count all subordinate to this rest of God as the first thing in my life; I yield all to walk in perfect fellowship with God.”  You can not get that and live every day in perfect fellowship with God, without giving up time to it.  You take time for everything.  How many hours a day has a young lady spent for years and years that she may become proficient on the piano?  How many years does a young man study to fit himself for the profession of the law or medicine?  Hours, and days, and weeks, and months, and years, gladly given up to perfect himself for his profession.  And do you expect that religion is so cheap that without giving time you can find close fellowship with God?  You can not.  But, oh, my brothers and sisters, the pearl of great price is worth everything.  God is worth everything.  Christ is worth everything.  Oh, come to-day, and say, “Lord, at any cost help me; I do want to live this life.”  And if you find it difficult to say this, and if there is a struggle within the heart, never mind; say to God, “Lord, I thought I was willing, but I see how much unwillingness there is; come and discover what the evil is still in the heart.”  By His grace, if you will lie at His feet and trust Him you may depend upon it deliverance will come.