What shall it profit a man....?


 This is the wisdom of a Christian, when he can solace himself against the meanness and any kind of discomfort of his outward condition, with the comfortable assurance of the love of God, that He has called him to holiness, given him some measure of it, and an endeavour after more; and by this may he conclude, that He has ordained him unto salvation. If either he is a stranger where he lives, or as a stranger deserted by his friends, and very nearly stripped of all outward comforts, yet may he rejoice in this, that the eternal, unchangeable love of God, which is from everlasting to everlasting, is sealed to his soul. And O! what will it avail a man to be surrounded with the favour of the world, to sit unmolested in his own home and possessions, and to have them very great and pleasant, to be well moneyed, and landed and befriended, and yet estranged and severed from God, not having any token of His special love?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

God of my Fathers

The Word of the Lord is tried. The Bible tested and triumphant B. B. Loomis, Ph. D. Look at some of the severe tests to which the Bible has been subjected, and by successfully meeting which it has vindicated its claims to a Divine origin, and to universal human acceptance. I. THE BIBLE HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME. Since the Sacred Canon closed, how many and how vast are the changes which have gone on among men. Hardly one of the ancient powers is today extant. How great have been the strides of human progress! Yet the science of salvation, as taught in the Bible, has needed no remodeling. The race does not outgrow the religion of the Bible. Compare the case of the Bible with the poems of Homer. The two works are, in a certain sense, contemporaneous; critics have denied to the Bible any higher inspiration than that of human genius; and Greek poetry held among that ancient people very much the same place as did the sacred Scriptures among the Jews. Three thousand years ago the two works stood before the world on a comparative equality. How stands the case today? Homer is read as a model of epic verse and specimen of old Ionic Greek. The Bible is read everywhere as a transcript of the Eternal. II. THE TEST OF CRITICISM. Criticism, the most searching and severe to which any work has ever been subjected. A criticism often hostile. But the old Book has come out of it only purified. III. THE TEST OF PRACTICAL TRIAL. In the patent office are models of many beautiful machines that could not be worked. The Book will stand every practical test. It gives the solution of the great enigmas of the human soul, and provides the consolation for life's dark hours, those hours of disappointment, adversity, sorrow, and bereavement which come so surely to us all. (B. B. Loomis, Ph. D.)