f rising in life? If it is, you are not singular in
your notion. There are thousands who call themselves civilized and
Christians, and yet have no higher notion of what man's highest good may
be. But do you mean by rising in life, simply becoming a nobler, because
a better man? For if you mean that latter, I seriously advise you to
hearken to what the Creator and Governor of all heaven and earth, Jesus
Christ our Lord, has told you on that matter, when He said--"Seek ye
first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you."

Seek ye first the kingdom of God. Alas! this money-making generation
talks a great deal about religion and saving their souls, being quite
indifferent to the serious question--whether their souls are worth saving
or not: but as for the kingdom of God, of which our Lord and His Apostles
speak so often, they have forgotten altogether what it is. They talk
too, a great deal, about the righteousness of Christ: but they have
forgotten also what the righteousness of Christ, which is also the
righteousness of God, is like.

The kingdom of God; the government of God; the laws and rules by which
Christ, King of kings, and King, too, of every nation and man on earth,
whether they know it or not, governs mankind, that is what you have to
seek, because it is there already. You are in Christ's kingdom. If you
wish to prosper in it, find out what its laws are. That will be true
wisdom. For in keeping the commandments of God, and in obeying His laws;
in that alone is life; life for body and soul; life for time and for
eternity.

And the righteousness of God, which is the righteousness of Christ;--find
out what that is, and pray to Christ to give it to you; for so alone will
you be what a man should be, created after God in righteousness and true
holiness, and renewed into the image and likeness of God. You will find
plenty of persons now, as in all times, who will tell you that you need
not do that; that all you need, for this world or the world to come, is
some righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees; calling that--oh shame
that such a glorious and eternal truth should be so caricatured and
degraded by man--justification by faith: while all they mean is,
justification not by faith, but by mere assent; assenting to certain
doctrines; keeping certain religious watch-words in your mouth, and, over
and above, leading a tolerably respectable life. But what says