The robber leaned on his spear and thought and said:
"Wait a moment."
He mounted his horse, rode back to the rest of the robbers, and came
back in about five minutes with his dress changed. This time he looked
not like a robber, but like a merchant. He took the boy up on his
horse and said:
"My boy, I have long wanted to do something for my God and for my
mother, and I have this moment renounced my robber's life. I am also a
merchant. I have a large business house in the city. I want you to
come and live with me, to teach me about your God; and you will be
rich, and your mother some day will come and live with us."
And it all happened. By seeking first the Kingdom of God, all these
things were added unto him.
Boys, banish forever from your minds the idea that religion is
_subtraction_. It does not tell us to give things up, but rather gives
us something so much better that they give themselves up. When you see
a boy on the street whipping a top, you know, perhaps, that you could
not make that boy happier than by giving him a top, a whip, and half
an hour to whip it. But next birthday, when he looks back he says,
"What a goose I was last year to be delighted with a top. What I want
now is a baseball bat."
Then when he becomes an old man, he does not care in the least for a
baseball bat; he wants rest, and a snug fireside and a newspaper every
day. He wonders how he could ever have taken up his thoughts with
baseball bats and whipping-tops.
Now, when a boy becomes a Christian, he grows out of the evil things
one by one--that is to say, if they are really evil--which he used to
set his heart upon; (of course I do not mean baseball bats, for they
are not evils); and so instead of telling people to give up things, we
are safer to tell them to "seek first the Kingdom of God," and then
they will get new things and better things, and