What Shall It Profit?

A steamship crowded with passengers, many of them miners from California, suddenly struck a submerged wreck as it sped down the Mississippi. In a moment her deck was wild with confusion. The lifeboats were able to take off only one fourth of the passengers. The rest, divesting themselves of their garments, succeeded in swimming to shore. Immediately after the last had left the vessel, a man appeared on deck. He leaped into the river, but instantly sank like a stone. When his body was recovered it was found that while the other passengers were escaping he had been rifling the miners' trunks ad around his waist he had fastened bags of gold. In a quarter of an hour he had amassed more than most men do in a lifetime. But, he instantly lost his life. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36).

—Selected

Procrastination

"Tomorrow," he promised his conscience,
"Tomorrow," I mean to believe.
Tomorrow I'll think as I ought to,
Tomorrow the Saviour receive.
Tomorrow I'll conquer the habits
That hold me from Heaven away."
And ever his conscience repeated
One word, and one only—"Today!"
Tomorrow! tomorrow! tomorrow!
Thus day after day it went on.
Tomorrow! tomorrow! tomorrow!
Till youth with its vision was gone,
Till age and his passions had written
The message of fate on his brow,
And forth from the shadows came Death
With the pitiless syllable, "Now!"

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).