Let this consideration urge you, then, first, indeed to provide what is _necessary_ for the service of GOD by yourselves; afterwards, what may help others in like manner to serve Him; and then, not by mulcting them, but by denying yourselves, to give some true gift, some free-will offering, which is costly in itself, and promises no present equivalent. Thus shall you overcome selfish and mere human feelings, and render dutiful, and grateful, and costly sacrifice unto the LORD your GOD. My brethren, depart not with the notion that you have heard nothing of Christ this morning. It is a deep-rooted error that, under the law men were commanded to do, but under the Gospel they are forbidden; that _then_ salvation was a work, but _now_ it is only a contemplation. The contrary is the truth. Men might contemplate and wait idly and dreamily before their Redeemer came; they must be up and doing now that He has laid His hand upon them, and given them a lifelong, arduous, self-sacrificing work to do. It is because Christ has purchased you wholly, body, and soul, and spirit, thoughts, words, and deeds, talents and substance, to be an entire and constant sacrifice unto Him; it is because He is watching over you, and working for and in you, to make you that sacrifice; it is because presently He will judge and deal with you, according as you have been, or have not been what He required, that I have enforced on you the pre-eminently Christian lesson of taking solemn, anxious heed, that you offer not unto the LORD your GOD of that which doth cost you nothing. SERMON IX. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. PHILIPPIANS, III., 13, 14. “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of GOD in Christ JESUS.” TO have apprehended; to have attained unto the perfection of the knowledge of Christ; to have gone through the Christian’s appointed course of discipline and duties; to have acquired the acceptable and approved character; to have laid such a hold on salvation as could not be shaken off—this even Paul did not claim to have done. Divinely enlightened as he was, greatly zealous, blamelessly righteous, the chosen vessel of the LORD, he could not be satisfied with the past, he could not rest in the present, he could not calculate on the future. “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead”—be made one of those who shall be raised in Christ to glory—“not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect. . . . I count not myself to have apprehended.”