of God, so that I may behold my God all the more clearly, love Him all the more perfectly, and rejoice in Him all the more. Amen.
FIFTY-THIRD SERMON.
ON THE EASY MEANS THAT WE MAY USE TO INCREASE OUR GLORY IN HEAVEN.
Subject.
Wonderfully easy has God made it for us to increase sanctifying grace here and glory in heaven.—Preached on the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
Quærite ergo primum regnum Dei.—Matt. vi. 33.
“Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God.”
Introduction.
Blind mortals on this world, who, weighed down by incessant cares during your lives, trouble yourselves only about what you shall have to eat and drink, and wherewith you shall be clothed, how you arc to heap up wealth and riches, or to gain an honored place among men, or to secure your bodily comforts and gratify your senses! Blind mortals, I repeat; for how vain is your labor! It has nothing to do with what we are sent on earth to seek. Quite different is the end that God had in view when He created us. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God;” it is an eternal gratification of body and soul, an eternal garment of glory, an eternal treasury of riches, an eternal crown of honor, eternal joys and delights in the kingdom of God, that we should alone strive for with all our might; and this too we can if we are in the state of grace and wish to do so; this we can gain and increase, and in fact gain and increase with ease. Ah, where is our avarice, our ambition? where our desire for true joys if we take no care of this? “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” My dear brethren, on last Sunday we have seen that we can always add to our heavenly honor, wealth, and happiness in the kingdom of God; and we have seen too what a great good even the least increase of the kind must be, and in what it consists.
