THE THIRD CONDITION OF SALVATION -- SURRENDER OF SELF TO GOD'S SERVICE

I will now tell the children about one more condition which must be complied with if they wish to be fully saved. We will call it surrender of self for service. Probably Moses was the greatest man that ever walked the earth and lived the nearest to God. He once said to Israel: "SERVE the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. . . Him shalt thou serve and to him shalt thou cleave" (Deut. 10:12, 20). Again he said: "Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall SERVE him, and cleave unto him." In the same spirit Joshua said: "Take diligent heed . . . to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul " (Dent. 22:5). Again he said: "Choose ye this day whom ye will SERVE" (Deut. 24:15). Samuel said: "Only fear the Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart" (1 Sam. 12:24). David said: "Who then is willing to consecrate his service this day unto the Lord?" (1 Chron. 29:5).

All these passages show that God expects us to enter his service, if we choose to be his saved children.

Abraham devoted himself to serve the Lord when he heard God's call to leave his country and kindred, and the service of the idol gods of his fathers, and go out into a strange country wherever God might send him, there to live for God and to serve only Him. Abraham obeyed and went, and that submissive, willing devotion of himself to God was Abraham's service.

Sometimes, before Christ came to the world, people would want to do something for the service of God, and they brought a lamb or a heifer, or an ox to the temple, and gave them to the priests for their support. Thus they helped to keep up the temple service. They sometimes brought their rings and jewels and precious stones to help build or enrich the tabernacle or temples. Sometimes they had nothing to give but their labor. They then came and worked on the buildings that were being erected for the worship of God. In this way people were said to consecrate lambs and oxen and silver and precious stones and their time and toil to the Lord.

After Christ came, people began to know that God wanted them to bring not merely a sheep or an ox to the Lord's temple, but he wanted them to bring their own selves to the Lord himself So St. Paul wrote to the Romans: "I beseech you therefore by the mercies of the Lord that ye present your bodies [selves] to thee Lord, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

I want now to relate to you some stories which will make plain what it is to devote one's self to God's service.

A woman died in this town a few days ago, leaving four children, the oldest twelve years old, and the youngest, a baby boy, two years old. The woman's husband was a low drunkard who cared nothing about his wife and children. He took the money his poor sick wife had earned by washing, and had saved to buy medicine for herself, and spent it for drink. When she knew she was dying, the poor mother left her little baby boy to the care of his sister. The dear young girl accepted the precious trust. After the mother was buried. some kind-hearted people offered to take the oldest child and bring her up as their own. Others offered a home to the baby brother. But to every such offer the brave little girl returned one and the same answer: "Nobody shall ever take my baby brother from me; whoever gets one of us must take both of us; we shall not be separated." At last a lady was found in a far-distant state who takes both. And yesterday that noble young girl went off alone with the baby, to go to the far-distant home a thousand miles from here. What a wonderful example of devotion! The dear girl, with a depth of sister love unmeasured, has given her very life to the care of her little brother. Now if she has done all that for Jesus' sake, and out of love to Him, it will show that she is not only devoted to her brother but to Jesus also.

Dr. Hillis, of Chicago, tells us of a poor apple woman whose funeral the famous Dr. George MacDonald attended when he was working among the poor in London. "Her history makes the story of kings and queens contemptible. Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger, cold, and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys sleeping in an ash box, whose lot was harder than hers. She dedicated her heart and life to the little waifs for Jesus' sake. During forty-two years she mothered and reared some twenty orphans; gave them home, and bed, and food; taught them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the trades; helped others off to Canada and America. She had misshapen features, but an exquisite smile was on hem dead face, for she had a beautiful soul. Poverty disfigured her garret and want made it wretched; nevertheless God's beautiful angels hovered over it. Like a broken vase the perfume of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after we are gone." Now every child can understand what her consecration was. She first gave herself to Jesus. And then, because Jesus loved poor starving little orphans, she loved them, too, and sold apples and saved her pennies, and spent them, not on herself, but to buy food for the poor, hungry, starving boys and girls around her for whom Jesus died.

Another beautiful story will show what a life devoted to serving Jesus means. A God-fearing Scotch couple had a son, their only child living. From early childhood they devoted him to the Lord, seeking to impress his heart with the hove of Jesus. To their great delight he yielded in early youth to the call of the Gospel, and at length he offered himself for mission work among the natives of the west coast of Africa. While studying for this purpose his parents labored hard and denied themselves many comforts in order to support him at college, and when he left for the foreign field among savage heathen, his old mother spun harder than ever, so that by the sale of her thread she might help her son in this noble work for Jesus.

By and by her husband was taken home to the Father's house above, and though she well knew where he had gone she shed many tears. But a few weeks passed when another heavy grief had to be endured. Tidings came that her son had been drowned when he was crossing an African river while going to one of his preaching stations. Soon, however, she dried her weeping eves, and with humble cheerfulness remarked: "My son is nearer to me now in heaven than he was in Africa." For a considerable period she had managed to send him S50 a year to aid him in his work, and when he died she did not cease her labor for Jesus. "Now my son is gone," said the noble old woman, "my $50 shall go to some other servant of Jesus." What a beautiful example of consecration! The woman had given herself to Jesus, and then gave her boy to be a missionary, and then gave her earnings -- $50 a year. And when both her husband and son had been taken home to God, she still toiled and saved for Jesus' dear sake, and for the salvation of those for whom He died.

All these stories I have related about the consecration of people who were humble and poor. Many ears ago a lad of sixteen left home to seek his fortune. As he trudged along toward New York he met an old neighbor, the captain of a canal boat, and the following conversation took place, which changed the current of the boy's life: "Well, William, where are you going?" "I don't know," he answered; "father is too poor to keep me at home any longer, and says I must now make a living for myself." "There is no trouble about that," said the captain. "Be sure that you start right, and you will get along finely." William told his friend that the only trade he knew anything about was soap and candle making, at which he had helped his father at home. "Well," said the old man, "let me pray with you once more and give you a little advice, and then I will let you go." They both kneeled down upon the towpath; the dear old man prayed earnestly for William, and then gave this advice: "Some one will soon be the leading soap-maker in New York. It may as well be you as anybody. I hope it may. Be a good man; give your heart to Christ; give the Lord all that belongs to him of every dollar you earn; make an honest soap; give a full pound, and I am certain you will yet be a prosperous and rich man."

When the boy arrived in the city he found it hard to get work. Lonesome and far from home, he remembered his mother's words, and the prayer and charge of tine canal-boat captain. He gave his heart to God, and thins "sought first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," and then he joined the church. The first dollar he earned brought up the question of he Lord's part. In the Bible he found that the Jew gave one-tenth, and he gave ten cents of his first dollar, and of every dollar, as sacred to the Lord.

He was industrious, and soon became partner, and then sole proprietor, and instructed his book-keeper to open an account with the Lord, and carry one-tenth of all his income to that account. He prospered; his business grew; his family was blessed; his soap sold, and he grew rich -- faster than he had ever hoped. He then gave the Lord two-tenths, an-id prospered more than ever. Then he gave three-tenths, then four-tenths, then five-tenths, He educated his family, settled all his plans for life, and then gave all his income to God, and prospered more than ever." This is the story of William Colgate, who founded Colgate University, gave millions of dollars to the Lord's cause, and left a name that will never die. I never see a piece of Colgate soap but I think of that poor boy praying on the tow-path of the canal, and afterward in his lonely room in the city giving his heart to God, and consecrating his life to the Master's service. What a consecrated and holy life he lived, and how endless will be his influence for good! He lived to serve Christ and bless others for Jesus' sake. That is serving Jesus.

The great Earl of Shaftsbury was another man who served Jesus. When a little child he was cruelly neglected by his parents and deserted to the care of servants. But during the first seven years of his life one of the servants was a kind-hearted woman, and a devout Christian. She taught the child to love Jesus, and developed in him a desire to serve his Savior by being helpful to his fellow creatures. She taught him a prayer which the great Earl never forgot to repeat daily throughout his long and busy life. He was accustomed to say that that prayer had been of much more value to him than all the religious teaching of later years. When this good woman died she left him her little watch, and to his dying day the Earl would wear no other, saying: "It was left to me by the best friend Lever had." When this nobleman became a man, the blessedness of an unselfish life entranced him. He entered Parliament at twenty-five years of age, and devoted his life to the service of the poor, oppressed, abandoned and degraded. He was filled with Christ-like pity for the toiling, cruelly-treated masses, -- children walking twenty-five miles a day in attending the machinery in the factories, and women condemned to fifteen hours of slavish toil daily with no hope for the future. He exposed himself to obloquy and hatred to secure laws for their protection. He organized ragged schools, wept over the hunger and want of the pupils, then fed them from his own house. They were dying of cold and hunger and the imperial waste of London, and he blessed them with his personal help. He organized and cared for the boot-blacks who were called "Shaftsbury's Brigades." All the thieves and fallen and friendless in London loved him and stood ready to protect him. His plans were jeered at as " hobbies" by the selfish. aristocrats. Sensitive to ridicule, he once wrote in his diary: "The Lord can not keel) people from calling me a fool; but he can keep me from being a fool." Shaftsbury was one of the saints of the Most High -- a man of faith and prayer and battles. Wherever there was a wrong to be righted, or suffering to be relieved, he was at the front -- a brave, consecrated, Christ-like soul. When he died, Farrar wrote: "For departed kings there are appointed honors, and the wealthy have their gorgeous obsequies. It was Shaftsbury's noble fortune to clothe a nation with spontaneous mourning, and to go down .to the grave followed by the benedictions of the poor. Probably Westminster Abbey never presented an aspect so dear to the angels, and the King of angels, as when the representatives of the sick, the suffering and the destitute, -- the alleviators of every kind of misery, were gathered under its high embowed roof to witness the funeral in Lord Shaftbury's honor."

We have now seen what serving Jesus means. But some one will ask:

II. Why must one be thus devoted to God in order to be saved? The answer is very plain and simple. When a boy is saved, he is not only saved from something, but he is also saved to something and for something. He is saved from a life of sin and its consequences to a life of holiness. He is saved from the service of Satan to the service of Jesus for the good of humanity. A king could not forgive and pardon a rebel, who was still in rebellion, and determined to continue fighting against his government and throne. .

Now our God is king of the universe, and he can not pardon and save us while we are still hating him and his cause and industriously serving Satan by wicked lives. So every boy or girl or man or woman who wishes to be saved must offer himself to the service of God.

III. You will notice that God has a right to you. He first created you, and gave you all your faculties and powers, everything that makes you what you are. He made you for his glory, and your own highest good; that gives him a right to your service.

But further; he has preserved your life from a thousand ills, and ten thousand perils, given you every breath you ever breathed, and every mouthful you ever ate, and your parents and home and every blessing you ever enjoyed. That gives him a second claim to your service. And then he loved you enough to die for you that he might save your poor soul from sin and death. So you see God has three claims upon you for love and obedience and service. And it becomes utterly impossible for him to save your soul if you continue to wickedly disregard these claims and refuse to devote your hives to his service.

IV. You will see that to be saved and become genuine Christians you must surrender your all. In ancient history we are told that the people of Collatia surrendered to the authority and protection of Rome. The question was asked them: "Do you deliver up yourselves, the Collatin
people, your city, your fields, your water, your bonds, your temples, your homes, all things that are
yours into the hands of the people of Rome?" And on their replying, "We deliver up all," they were
received. This is a beautiful illustration of the consecration every child should make who would
be saved. If you feel the wickedness of your sin, and your guilt and danger; if your soul is
burdened, and you want rest, and the loving smile of Jesus, then by repentance turn away from sin,
and go in faith to the Savior, and say from the heart:--

"Lord, I make a full surrender,
Every power and thought be thine;
Thine entirely, through eternal ages thine."

Let Frances Ridley's Havergal's hymn be your prayer:

"Take my life and let it be,
Consecrated, Lord, to thee;
Take my hands, and let them move,
At the impulse of thy love.

"Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for thee;
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King.

"Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

"Take my will and make it thine,
It shall be no longer mine;
Take my heart, it is thine own,
It shall be thy royal throne.

"Take my love; my Lord, I pour
At thy feet its treasure-store;
Take myself, and I will be
Ever, only, all for thee."

QUESTIONS

1. What is the third condition of salvation?
2. What is devoting one's self to God's service?
3. What did people bring God in olden times?
4. What does God want now?
5. What kind of a consecration did the girl make?
6. What did the apple-woman in London do?
7. What did the Scotch couple give to God?
8. What did William Colgate do?
9. And the Earl of Shaftsbury?
10. Why must one be thus devoted to God?
11. Why has God a right to us?
12. Must you give everything to God's service?

Sing: "Come, Sinners, Come." Also, "Take My Life and Let It Be."