uly followers and disciples of Jesus Christ. And this
consideration especially bears on these words of our text.

The first exhortation which Christianity addresses to a man is not
'ask.' The first duty that a man has to discharge in regard to Christ
and His grace, and the revelation that is in Him, is neither to seek nor
to knock, but it is to take and to open. Christ knocks first, and when
He knocks we should say, 'Come in, Thou blessed of the Lord.'

To bid a man pray, when he should be exhorted to believe, is to darken
the clearness of the divine counsel, and to narrow the fulness of the
divine grace. God does not wait to be asked for His mercy and His
pardon. Like the dew on the grass, He 'tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth
for the sons of men.' Before we call, He answers; and to say to people,
'Pray!' 'Seek!' 'Knock!' when the one thing to say is 'Take the gifts
that God sent you before you asked for them,' is folly, and has often
led to a course of painful and profitless struggling, which was all
unnecessary and wide of the mark. It is like telling a man to pray for
rain when the reservoirs at his side are full, and every flower is
bending its chalice, charged with the blessing. It is needless to tell a
man to seek for the treasure that is lying there at his side, and to
which he has only to turn his eyes and stretch out his hands. It is
folly to exhort a man to beat at a door that is standing wide open. The
door of God's grace is thus wide open, and the treasure of God's mercy
has come down, and the rain of God's forgiving love has dropped upon all
of us, and made the wilderness to rejoice.

And so my message to some of you, dear brethren, is to say that you
have nothing whatever to do, primarily, with this text. You have neither
to ask, nor to seek, nor to knock, but to listen to Him, whose gentle
hand knocks at your hearts, and to open the door and let Him come in
with His grace and mercy.

II. And now, in the next place, let me ask you to consider in what
region of life these promises are true.

They sound at first as if they were dead in the teeth of the facts of
life. Is there any region of experience in which to ask is to receive,
to seek is to find, and in which every door flies open at our touch? If
there be, it is not in the ordinary work-a-day world in which you and I
live, where we all have to put up with a great many bitter
disappointments and refused requests, where we have all searched long
and