God wants boys' _lives_, not only their souls. It is for active
service that soldiers are drilled, and trained, and fed, and armed.
That is why you and I are in the world at all--not to prepare to go
out of it some day, but to serve God actively in it _now_. It is
monstrous, and shameful, and cowardly to talk of seeking the Kingdom
_last_. It is shirking duty, abandoning one's rightful post, playing
into the enemy's hand by doing nothing to turn his flank. Every hour a
Kingdom is coming in your heart, in your home, in the world near you,
be it a Kingdom of Darkness or a Kingdom of Light. You are placed
where you are, in a particular business, in a particular street, to
help on there the Kingdom of God. You cannot do that when you are old
and ready to die. By that time your companions will have fought their
fight, and lost or won. If they lose, will you not be sorry that you
did not help them? Will you not regret that only at the last you
helped the Kingdom of God? Perhaps you will not be able to do it
then. And then your life has been lost indeed.
Very few people have the opportunity to seek the Kingdom of God at the
end. Christ, knowing all that, knowing that religion was a thing for
our life, not merely for our death-bed, has laid this command upon us
now: "Seek _first_ the Kingdom of God."
I am going to leave you with this text itself. Every boy in the world
should obey it.
Boys, before you go to work to-morrow, before you go to sleep
to-night, resolve that, God helping you, you are going to seek _first_
the Kingdom of God. Perhaps some boys here are deserters; they began
once before to serve Christ, and they deserted. Come back again, come
back again today! Others have never enlisted at all. Will you not do
it now? You are old enough to decide. The grandest moment of a boy's
life is that moment when he decides to "_Seek first the Kingdom of
God_."