be no more. Many of you will not grant worldly mindedness a sin.
When ye make it a god, and sacrifice unto it, ye fancy that ye are seeking
heaven. I pray you do not deceive your souls. Give them as good measure as
ye would do your bodies in any thing. Would ye say ye were seeking after
any thing, I suppose to find such a friend to speak to, would ye, I say,
think that ye earnestly desired to see that friend, and sought him, if ye
did all the day take up your time with other petty business that might be
done at any time? How can ye imagine ye seek not the world but heaven,
when, if ye would look back upon the current and stream, both of your
affections and endeavours, ye would find they have run this way toward
your present ease and satisfaction? Ye do not give one entire hour to the
thought of Jesus Christ and his kingdom, it may be, in a whole week.

Are ye then seekers of the kingdom? If ye did but examine one day how it
is spent, ye might pass a judgment upon your whole life. Do ye seek that
first which is fewest times in your thoughts, and least in your
affections, and hath least of your time bestowed on it? Alas, do not
flatter yourselves. That ye seek first which is often in your mind, which
uses to stir up your joy or grief, or desire most. It is this present
world only, and this present world is your portion. Ye shall lose the
kingdom of heaven by seeking to make the world sure. As for the children
of God, ye who will be his disciples, (to such he speaks here,) it becomes
not you to be like the heathens. Ye ought, most of all, to adorn your holy
profession, your high calling to a kingdom above. If then ye seek these
things below, as if ye sought them not, ye ought to make religion your
main business, else ye are not indeed religious. If Christianity take not
up a man, he hath not the thing, but the name. "Seek first," that is,
chiefly, principally, and above all, "the kingdom of God and his
righteousness." Nay, this is more strange, it is a first that hath no
second. Seek this first, so as if ye sought nothing else, and all things
necessary here shall be superadded to the seeking and finding of this
kingdom.

This is that which I would have engraven on all our hearts, that there is
a necessity of making Christianity our calling and trade, our business and
employment, else we must renounce it. It will take our whole man, our
whole time, not spare hours, and by thoughts. Ye have a great task to
accomplish, a grea