ition to that great law. Some special
duty was urged upon him, by the providence, or the word, or the Spirit
of God, that could not be performed unless his will were subjected to
God's will, and unless his love for himself and the world were
subordinated to his love of his Maker. If a young man, perhaps he was
commanded to consecrate his talents and education to a life of
philanthropy and service of God in the gospel, instead of a life devoted
to secular and pecuniary aims. God said to him, by His providence, and by
conscience, "Go teach my gospel to the perishing; go preach my word, to
the dying and the lost." But he loved worldly ease pleasure and
reputation more than he loved God; and he refused, and went away
sorrowful, because this poor world looked very bright and alluring,
and the path of self-denial and duty looked very forbidding. Or, if he
was a man in middle life, perhaps he was commanded to abate his interest
in plans for the accumulation of wealth, to contract his enterprises, to
give attention to the concerns of his soul and the souls of his children,
to make his own peace with God, and to consecrate the remainder of his
life to Christ and to human welfare; and when this plain and reasonable
course of conduct was dictated to him, he found his whole heart rising up
against the proposition. Our Lord, alluding to the fact that there was
nothing in common between His spirit, and the spirit of Satan, said to
His disciples, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me"
(John xiv. 30). So, when the command to love God supremely comes to this
man of the world, in any particular form, "it hath nothing in him." This
first and great law finds no ready and genial response within his heart,
but on the contrary a recoil within his soul as if some great monster had
started up in his pathway. He says, in his mind, to the proposition:
"Anything but that;" and, with the young ruler, he goes away sorrowful,
because he knows that refusal is perdition.

Is there not a wonderful power to _convict_ of sin, in this test? If you
try yourself, as the young man did, by the command, "Thou shalt not
kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," you may
succeed, perhaps, in quieting your conscience, to some extent, and in
possessing yourself of the opinion of your fitness for the kingdom of
God. But ask yourself the question, "Do I love God supremely, and am I
ready and willing to do any and every particul