He said to them, "Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?"
 I shall never forget the circumstance, when after I thought I had made a full consecration to Christ, a slanderous report against my character came to my ears, and my heart was broken in agony because I should have to lose that, in preaching Christ's gospel I fell on my knees, and said, "Master, I will not keep back even my character for thee. If I must lose that too, then let it go, it is the dearest thing I have, but it shall go, if, like my Master, they shall say I have a devil and am mad; or, like him I am a drunken man and a wine-bibber. It is gone, if I may but say "I have suffered the loss of all things; and I do count them but dross that I may win Christ!" And you, Christian, will never get on well in serving God, till you have given all to him. That which you keep back will canker, If you reserve the least portion of your time, your property, or your talents, and do not give all to Christ, you will find there will be a sore, a gangrene in it; for Christ will bless you in all when you give all to him; but what you keep from him, he will curse, and blight, and ruin. He will have all of us, the whole of us, all we possess, or else he never will be satisfied. And now let me answer one or two objections, and I shall still stir you up, who make a profession of religion, to give up all you have to Christ. You say,  "Sir, I cannot do it; I am not in the right profession." Well, sir, you spoke truly when you said that; for if there be a profession that will not allow us to give all to Christ, it is not a right profession, and we ought not to follow it at all." "But," you say "how can I do it?" Well what are you? I do not care what you are; I assert it is possible for you to do all things in the name of God, and so to give glory to Christ. Do not think you need be a minister to dedicate yourself to Christ. Many a man has disgraced the pulpit, and many a man has sanctified an anvil; many a man has dishonored the cushion upon which he preached, and many a man has conscerated the plough with which he has turned the soil. We ought in all our business, as well as in our sacred acts, to do all for Christ. Let me illustrate this. A merchant in America had devoted a large part of his money for the maintenance of the cause of Christ; and one said to him, "What a sacrifice you make every year." Said he "Not so. I have a clerk: suppose I give that clerk fifty pounds to pay a schoolmaster, and when he goes to the schoolmaster, he should say, "Here is your salary; what a sacrifice it is to me to give you that! 'Why,' the schoolmaster would say, 'Sir, it is not yours, it is no sacrifice at all to you.'" So said this good man, "I gave up all when I came to God, I became his steward, and no longer head of the firm. I made God the head of the firm, and I became the steward. And now when I distribute of my wealth, I only distribute it as his allmoner; and it is no sacrifice at all." If we talk of sacrifices we make a mistake. Ought not that to be the spirit of our religion? It should be made a sacrifice at first, ant then afterwards there should be a voluntary offering of all. "I keep my shop open," said one, "and earn money for God. I and my family live out of it God allows us to do it; for as a minister lives by the gospel, he allows me to live by my business, and he permits me to provide a competence for old age, but that is not my object." "I sell these goods," said another one, but the profit I get, God has; that which I require for my own food and raiment, and for my household, that God giveth back to me, for he has said, bread shall be given me, and water shall be sure; but the rest is God's not mine; I do it all for God." Now you do not understand that theory, do you? It is not business. No, sirs, but if your hearts were right you would understand it, for it is God's gospel the giving up all to Christ; the giving up of everything to his cause. When we do that, then shall we understand this passage "Did ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" For your business, though it is carried on in your name, will, unknown to men, be carried on in God's name too. Let me beg of you, however, not to tell everybody, if you do it I have known some that hang the gospel in the window, more attractively, sometimes, than ribbons. I do hate the cant of a man, who, when you go to buy ribbons or pay a bill, asks you to have a tract, or invites you into the beck parlour to pray; you will see at once what he is after. He wants to sanctify his counter, so that as people catch flies with honey, he may catch you with religion. Put your religion where it will come out, but do not cant about it. If a stranger should call upon you, and in a moment exclaim "Let us pray;" your best policy is to let him have the street to do it in, and you should say, "Thank you, I do my praying alone mostly. I see what it is. If I thought you had the spirit of prayer, and it had been the proper season, I would have joined with you with all my heart." But the religion of a man who will just step into your house, to let you see what an extraordinary pious man he is, is either very sick, or else it is a galvanized thing that has got no life in it at all. I regard prayer as a very sacred thing. "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou givest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." For verily if you do it to be seen of men you have your reward: and a poor one it is, a little praise for a minute, and it is all gone. But, nevertheless, do not run into one extreme by running from another. Conscerate your business by your religion. Do not paint your religion on your side-board; but keep it ready whenever you want it, and I am sure you will want it always. Says one, "How can I do God's business? I have no talent, I have no money; all I earn in the week I have to spend, and I have scarce money enough to pay my rent. I have no talent; I could not teach in a Sunday-school." Brother, have you a child? Well, there is one door of usefulness for you. Sister, you are very poor; no one knows you, you have a husband, and however drunken he may be, there is a door of usefulness for you. Bear up under all his insults, be patient under all his taunts and jeers, and you can serve God, and do God's business so." "But, sir I am sick, it is only to-day I am able to get out at all; I am always on my bed." You can do your Master's business, by Iying on a bed of suffering, for him, if you do it patiently. The soldier who is ordered to lie in the trenches, is just as obedient as the man who is ordered to storm the breach. In everything you do you can serve your God. Oh, when the heart is rightly tuned in this matter we shall never make excuses, and say, "I cannot be about my Father's business." We shall always find some business of his to do. In the heroic wars of the Swiss, we read that the mothers would bring cannon-balls for the fathers to fire upon the enemy, and the children would run about and gather up the shot that sometimes fell, when ammunition ran short. So that all did something. We hate war, but we will use the figure in the war of Christ. There is something for you all to do. Oh I let us who love our Master, let us who are bound to serve him by the ties of gratitude let us say, "Did ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And now I close up by addressing all the Lord's people here, and urging them to serve God with all their hearts, by giving them two or three very brief and very earnest reasons. Be about your Father's business with all earnestness, because that is the way of  usefulness. You cannot do your own business and God's too. You cannot serve God and self any more than you can serve God and mammon. If you make your own business God's business, you will do your business well; and you will be useful in your day and generation. Never shall we see any great revival in the church, or any great triumphs of religion until the Christian world is more touched with the spirit of entire consecration to Christ. When the world shall see as in earnest then God will bring men in; not before. We go to our pulpits in half heartedness: we go to our place of worship mere shells without the kernel. We give the outward ceremony and take away the heart. We shall never see Christ's cause triumphant so. Would you be useful? Would you extend your Master's empire? Then be about your Father's business. Again, would you be  happy? Be about your Father's business. Oh! it is sweet employment to serve your Father. You need not turn aside from the way of business to do that. If your heart be right, you can serve God in weighing a pound of tea as much as in preaching a sermon. You can serve God as much in driving a horse and cart as in singing a hymn serve God in standing behind your counter. At the right time and the right season, as much as sitting in your pews. And oh, how sweet to think, "I am doing this for God. My shop is opened on God's behalf; I am seeking to win profit for God; I am seeking to get business for God 's cause, that I may be able to devote more to it, and prosper it more by what I am able voluntarily to consecrate to him." You will have a happiness when you rise, such as you never knew before, if you can think, "I am going to serve God to-day;" and when you end at night, instead of saying, "I have lost so much," you will be able to say, "Not I, my God has lost it. But the silver and the gold are his and if he does not care to have either of them very well; let them go; he shall have it one way or another. I do not want it; if he chooses to take it from me in bad debts, well and good. Let me give to him in another way, it will be the same; I will revere him continually, even in my daily avocations." And this dear friends, will be the way and I trust you can be moved by this this will be the way to have eternal glory at the last, not for the sake of what you do, but as the gracious reward of God for what you have done. "They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever." Would you like to go to heaven alone? I do not think you would. My happiest thought is this, that when I die, if it shall be my privilege to enter into rest in the bosom of Christ I know I shall not enter heaven alone. Thousands have been there, whose hearts have been pricked and have been drawn to Christ under the labors of my ministry. Oh! what a pleasant thing to flap one's wings to heaven and have a multitude behind, and when you enter heaven to say, "Here am I and the children thou hast given me! "You cannot preach, perhaps, but you can travail in birth with children for God, in a spiritual sense, in another way; for if you help the cause you shall share the honour too. You do that, perhaps, which is not known among men yet you are the instrument, and God shall crown your head with glory amongst those that "shine as the stars for ever and ever." I think, dear Christian friends, I need say no more, except to bid you remember that you owe so much to Christ for having saved you from hell; you owe so much to that blood which redeemed you that you are in duty bound to say 