And so it always is.  ’Suffer me first, and when we get to the top of that hill, there is another one beyond.  And so we go on from step to step, getting ready to do the duties that we know are most imperative upon us, by sweeping preliminaries out of the way, and so we go on until our dying day, when somebody else buries us.  Like some backwoodsman in the American forests who should say to himself, ’Now, I will not sow a grain of wheat until I have cleared all the land that belongs to me.  I will do that first and then begin to reap,’ he would be a great deal wiser if he cleared and sowed a little bit first, and lived upon it, and then cleared a little bit more.  Mark the plain lesson that comes out of this incident, that the habit, for it is a habit with some of us, of putting other pressing duties forward, before we attend to the highest claims of Christ, is full of danger, because there will be no end to them if we once admit the principle.  And this is true not only in regard to Christianity, but in regard to everything that is worth doing in this world.  Whenever some great and noble task presents itself with its solemn call for consecration, some dwarf of an apparent duty thrusts itself in between and perks up in our faces with its demand, ’Attend to me first, and then I will let you go on to that other.’

But morally, this plea, however sincerely urged, is more or less unconscious self-deception.  The person who says ‘Suffer me first’ is usually hoodwinking conscience, and covering over, if not a determination not to do, at least a reluctance to determine to do, the postponed duty.  And although we may think ourselves quite resolved in spirit, and only needing the fitting vacant space to show that we are ready to act, in the majority of cases the man who says ’Suffer me first’ means, though he often does not know it, ’I do not think I will do it, after all, even then.’  Now there are a great many good people who, when urged to some of the plain duties of discipleship—­such as Christian work, Christian beneficence, the consecration of themselves to the service of their Master—­have always something else very important, and of immediate, pressing urgency, that has to be done first.  And then and then, ay? and then,—­something else, and then—­something else.  And so some of you go on, and will go on, unless by God’s grace you shake off the evil habit, to the end of your days, fancying yourselves disciples, and yet all the while delaying really to follow the Master until the close.  And ’all your yesterdays will be but lighting you, with unfulfilled purposes, to dusty death.’

II.  Now look at the apparently harsh and unreasonable refusal of this reasonable request.

It is extremely unlike Jesus Christ in substance and in tone.  It is unlike Him to put any barrier in the way of a son’s yielding to the impulses of his heart and attending to the last duties to his father.  It is extremely unlike Him to couch His refusal in words that sound, at first hearing, so harsh and contemptuous, and that seem to say, ’Let the dead world go as it will; never you mind it, do you not go after it at all or care about it.’