service to
the priesthood was logical. But when the Christian Church, especially as
represented by us Nonconformists, came to believe that a minister was
only a man who preached the Gospel, which every Christian man is bound
to do, the limitations of Christian service to the official class became
an illogical survival, utterly incongruous with the fundamental
principles of our conception of the Christian Church. And yet here it
is, devastating our churches to-day, and making hundreds of good people
perfectly comfortable, in an unscriptural and unchristian indolence,
because, forsooth, it is the minister's business to preach the Gospel. I
know that there is not nearly as much of that indolence as there used to
be. Thank God for that. There are far more among our congregations than
in former times who have realised the fact that it is _every_ Christian
man's task, somehow or other, to set forth the great name of Jesus
Christ. But still, alas, in a church with, say, 400 members, you may
knock off the last cypher, and you will get a probably not too low
statement of the number of people in it who have realised and fulfilled
this obligation. What about the other 360 'dumb dogs, that will not
bark'? And in that 360 there will probably be several men who can make
speeches on political platforms, and in scientific lecture-halls, and
about social and economical questions, only they cannot, for the life of
them, open their mouths and say a word to a soul about Him whom they say
they serve, and to whom they say they belong.

Brethren, this direct service cannot be escaped from, or commuted by a
money payment. In the old days a man used to escape serving in the
militia if he found a substitute, and paid for him. There are a great
many good Christian people who seem to think that Christ's army is
recruited on that principle. But it is a mistake. 'I seek you, not
yours.'

III. Lastly, and only a word. Christ seeks us, _and_ ours.

Not you _without_ yours, still less yours without you. This is no place,
nor is the fag end of a sermon the time, to talk about so wide a subject
as the ethics of Christian dealing with money. But two things I will
say--consecration of self is extremely imperfect which does not include
the consecration of possessions, and, conversely, consecration of
possessions which does not flow from, and is not accompanied by, the
consecration of self, is nought.

If, then, the great law of self-surrender is to run