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.