A man told me the following story, which I have never forgotten. “When I left home my mother gave me this text: “Seek first the kingdom of God.” But I paid no heed to it. I said when I got settled in life, and my ambition to get money was gratified, it would be time enough then to seek the kingdom of God. I went from one village to another and got nothing to do. When Sunday came, I went into a village church, and what was my surprise to hear the minister give out this text, “Seek first the kingdom of God.”
The text went to toe bottom of my heart I thought that it was only my mother’s prayers following me, or that some one must have written to the minister about me. I felt very uncomfortable, and when the meeting was over, I could not get the sermon out of my mind. I went away from that town, and at the end of a week went into another church, and heard the minister give out toe same text, “Seek first the kingdom of God.”
I felt sure this time it was the prayers of my mother, but I said calmly and deliberately, “No, I must first get wealthy.” I went on, and did not go into a church for a few months, but the first place of worship I went into, a third minister preached a sermon from the same text.
I tried to drown, to stifle my feelings; tried to get the sermon out of my mind, and resolved that I would keep away from church altogether, and for a few years did keep out of God’s house. My mother died, and that text she had given me kept coming up in my mind, and I said I will try to become a Christian. I could not; no sermon ever touches me; “my heart is as hard as a stone.”
I heard that story when I was a boy, and after I got to be a man, I went back home, and asked my mother what had become of the man who told it. “Didn’t I write to you about him?” she asked. “They have taken him to an insane asylum, and to every one who goes there, he points upward with his finger and says, “Seek first the kingdom of God.”
There, in the asylum, was that man with his eyes dull with the loss of reason, but the text had sunk into his soul—it had burned down deep.—MOODY.