A heathen woman offered herself for baptism. After the usual examination, she was asked whether she could give up her ornaments for Christ. It was an unexpected blow. The spirit of the gospel was explained to her, and her own consciousness of vanity appealed to.
She looked again and again at her handsome necklace, and then, with an air of modest decision, she took it off, saying,
“I love Christ more than this.”
Is anything filling your heart, and keeping you from yielding all to Christ—you, who are really His own? It may not be an ornament. I think I hear you say,
“That would be easy to give up, but, I have a friend who does not know my Saviour, I cannot give up”; or, perhaps, there is some worldly pleasure that is holding you, or some favorite amusement that claims much of your spare time, and keeps you from following your Lord and Master whole-heartedly.
Would you rather cling to them and miss the companionship of Christ and the joy He gives? O! will you not say with the poor heathen woman,
“I love Christ more than this”?
“The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-1514For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:14‑15)).