thy
heart, and soul, and strength, and mind.'

But, further, our relation to Jesus Christ is such as that nothing short
of absolute obedience to His commandment corresponds to it. There must
be the simplicity, the single-mindedness that thus obeys, obeys swiftly,
cheerfully, constantly. In all matters His command is my law, and, as
surely as I make His command my law, will He make my desire His motive.
For He Himself has said, in words that bring together our obedience to
His will and His compliance with our wishes, in a fashion that we should
not have ventured upon unless He had set us an example, 'If ye love Me,
keep My commandments. If ye ask anything in My name I will do it.' The
exclusive love that binds us, by reason of our faith in Him alone, to
that Lord ought to express itself in unhesitating, unfaltering,
unreserved, and unreluctant obedience to every word that comes from His
mouth.

These brief outlines are but the poorest attempt to draw out what the
words of my text imply. But such as they are, let us remember that they
do set forth the only proper response of the saved man to the saving
Christ. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' Anything short of a faith that
rests on Him alone, of a love that knits itself to His single,
all-sufficient heart, and of an obedience that bows the whole being to
the sweet yoke of His commandment is an unworthy answer to the Love that
died, and that lives for us all.

II. And now I have only time to glance at the solicitude for the
maintenance of this exclusive single-mindedness towards Christ.

Think of what threatens it. I say nothing about the ferment of opinion
in this day, for one man that is swept away from a thorough
whole-hearted faith by intellectual considerations, there are a dozen
from whom it is filched without their knowing it, by their own
weaknesses and the world's noises. And so it is more profitable that we
should think of the whole crowd of external duties, enjoyments,
sweetnesses, bitternesses, that solicit us, and would seek to draw us
away. Who can hear the low voice that speaks peace and wisdom when
Niagara is roaring past his ears? 'The world is too much with us, late
and soon. Buying and selling we lay waste our powers,' and break
ourselves away from our simple devotion to that dear Lord. But it is
possible that we may so carry into all the whirl the central peace, as
that we shall not be disturbed by it; and possible that 'whether we eat
or drink,