Again, if it must be Christ first, and everybody and everything besides second, then to carry that out, it will often have to be Christ only, and no one else.  There will come in every man’s life the need for a sharp decision between conflicting allegiances.  Life is full of harsh alternatives, and it is of no use to kick against the pricks.  The divine order is Jesus first and all things second.  But we sometimes break that order, and then it comes to be, ’Very well, then, if you cannot keep the lower in their right places, you must learn to do without them altogether; and if you will not have Him first and them second, you must not have them at all.’  ’If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out,’ it would be far better for thee to keep it without offence.  ’If thine hand offend thee,’ put it down on the block, and take the cleaver in the other hand, and off with it, it would be better for thee to go into life whole than maimed, but it is better to go into life maimed, than to go into destruction whole.  The abandonment of the father’s bier is second best; but it is sometimes imperative.  When you find a taste, a pursuit, a study, an occupation, a recreation coming between you and Jesus Christ—­when you do not know how it is, but, somehow or other, the sky that was blue a minute or two ago has a doleful veil of grey creeping all over it, be sure that something or other which ought to be under has got topmost, and you will have to get rid of it in order to come right again.  If this man would certainly have come back had Jesus let him go, he would have been let go; but because Jesus knew that he would not come back, therefore He said, ’You must deny your natural affection, because it is coming between you and Me.’

So, dear brethren, when we find that earthly duties, pursuits, occupations of any kind, affections, pure and beautiful as in themselves they may be, are hindering our following the Master, then, if they are things of which we can denude ourselves, though it be at a distinct sacrifice, we are bound to do so; or else we are not loving the Master more than all besides.

Let me remind you in closing of the variation in this story which the evangelist Luke gives us.  He interprets Christ’s commandment, ’Follow Me,’ and expands it into ‘preach the Gospel,’ which was involved in it.  There are many of you who are busily engaged in legitimate occupations, and devoting yourselves in various degrees to various forms of beneficence touching the secular condition of the people around us.  May I hint to such, ‘Let the dead bury their dead; preach thou the gospel?’ A Christian man’s first business is to witness for Jesus Christ, and no amount of diligence in legitimate occupations or in work for the good of others will absolve him from the charge of having turned duties upside down, if he says, ’I cannot witness for Jesus Christ, for I am so busy about these other things.’  This command has a special application to us ministers.  There are hosts of admirable things that we are tempted to engage in nowadays, with the enlarged opportunities that we have of influencing men, socially, politically, intellectually, and it wants rigid concentration for us to keep out of the paths which might hinder our usefulness, or, at all events, dissipate our strength.  Let us hear that ringing voice ringing always in our ears, ’Preach thou the gospel of the kingdom.’