Just then the policeman came, saw there was something seriously wrong, and carried him away to the hospital, where he lay for some time.  I am glad to say he got better.

What was his first thought at that terrible moment?  His duty.  He was not thinking of himself; he was thinking about his master.  First, the Kingdom of God.

But there is another arithmetic word.  What is it?  “Added.”

You know the difference between addition and subtraction.  Now, that is

          A VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE

in religion, because—­and it is a very strange thing—­very few people know the difference when they begin to talk about religion.  They often tell boys that if they seek the Kingdom of God, everything else is going to be subtracted from them.  They tell them that they are going to become gloomy, miserable, and will lose everything that makes a boy’s life worth living—­that they will have to stop baseball and story-books, and become little old men, and spend all their time in going to meetings and in singing hymns.

Now, that is not true.  Christ never said anything like that.  Christ said we are to “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” and

          EVERYTHING ELSE WORTH HAVING

is to be added unto us.  If there is anything I would like you to remember, it is these two arithmetic words—­“first” and “added.”

I do not mean by “added” that if you become religious you are all going to become rich.  Here is a boy, who, in sweeping out the shop tomorrow, finds a quarter lying among the orange boxes.  Well, nobody has missed it.  He puts it in his pocket, and it begins to burn a hole there.  By breakfast time he wishes that money were in his master’s pocket.  And by-and-by he goes to his master.  He says (to himself, and not to his master), “I was at the Boys’ Brigade yesterday, and I was told to seek first that which was right.”  Then he says to his master: 

“Please, sir, here is a quarter that I found upon the floor.”

The master puts it in the till.  What has the boy got in his pocket?  Nothing; but he has got the Kingdom of God in his heart.  He has laid up treasure in heaven, which is of infinitely more worth than the quarter.

Now, that boy does not find a dollar on his way home.  I have known that happen, but that is not what is meant by “adding.”  It does not mean that God is going to pay him in his own coin, for He pays in better coin.

Yet I remember once hearing of a boy who was paid in both ways.  He was very, very poor.  He lived in a foreign country, and his mother said to him one day that he must go into the great city and start in business, and she took his coat and cut it open and sewed between the lining and the coat forty golden dinars, which she had saved up for many years to start him in life.  She told him to take care of robbers as he went across the desert; and as he was going out of the door she said: