Job 21

Job 21:1-34

JOB’S ANSWERJob_21:1-34.JOB is not yet silenced, nor will it ever be so. These men opened the debate, but Job will close it. There are men who start things they cannot finish, and undertake tasks for which they find themselves insufficient.In this twenty-first chapter Job deals first with the false arguments; second, with the facts of history, and third, with the final judgment.THE FALSE These justified and demanded Job’s reply.“But Job answered and said,“Hear diligently my speech, and let this be your consolations” (Job 21:1-2).He makes it even though mockery may follow.“Suffer me that I may speak; and after that I have spoken, mock on” (Job 21:3).He reminds them that facts of history are after all more eloquent than speech.“As for me, is my complaint to man? and if it were so, why should not my spirit be troubled?“Mark me, and be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth” (Job 21:4-5).THE FACTS OF HISTORYThe first fact is that the wicked often prosper above the righteous.“Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my flesh.“Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?“Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes.“Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.“Their bull gendereth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf.“They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance.“They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ.“They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave” (Job 21:6-13).The second fact is that in their prosperity they often despise God.“Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.“What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? and what profit should we have, if we pray unto Him”? (Job 21:14-15).The third fact is that judgment sometimes seems to be reversed.“Lo, their good is not in their hand: the counsel of the wicked is far from me.“How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! and how oft cometh their destruction upon them! God distributeth sorrows in His anger.“They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carrieth away.“God lay eth up His iniquity for His children: He rewardeth him, and he shall know it.“His eyes shall see his destruction, and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty.“For what pleasure hath he in his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off in the midst?“Shall any teach God knowledge? seeing He judgeth those that are high.“One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.“His breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow.“And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure.“They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them.“Behold, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me.“For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? And where are the dwelling places of the wicked”? (Job 21:16-28).THE FINAL However, the great day of judgment will yet come.“Have ye not asked them that go by the way? and do ye not know their tokens.“That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath” (Job 21:29-30).The wicked may not sense death as an evil sentence.“Who shall declare his way to his face? and who shall repay him what he hath done?“Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb.“The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall draw after him, as there are innumerable before him” (Job 21:31-33).False philosophies settle no fates.“How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood”? (Job 21:34).

Job 21:11-14

THE DANCE OF DEATHJob_21:11-14.Preached in Minneapolis when the Public School Buildings opened to Round DancesTHE charge that the age is amusement-mad could scarce have a better illustration of its truthfulness than that to which the public has been treated in the last few weeks. There was never a time in history when so many matters of grave and great importance were up for consideration as now. And yet, the public gives increasing attention to the dance, showing that the passion for pleasure has outstripped much else.It has been confessed that all other pastimes fade and fall away when brought into comparison with the modern dance. It was lately said by a minister of the Gospel that he could quote Scripture for the modern dance. He could. Our text is an instance apropos:“They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance.“They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ.“They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave.“Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways?”.This Scripture suggests three things to which we invite attention.First:THE DEFENSE OF THE DANCEIt is not to be supposed that there is any great difference between ancients and moderns.

Humanity remains essentially the same through the centuries. The men of whom Job wrote must have had their reasons for their conduct and stood ready to defend the same.

They would have agreed with the present advocates of the dance on certain salient points. They would have said, as others are now saying: “It is the natural expression of youth and health.” “It is an essential education in graceful movements.” “It is a popular manifestation of the social temperament.”It is the natural expression of youth and health. We are told that the young lamb in the field cannot keep from running and skipping. It is not only his pastime, his pleasure, but enters into his development, and the lad and lass have a kindred exuberance of life, and it must voice itself. Hence, the dance is as natural to youth as is hopeful temperament and ruddy cheek!We admit it! No one has ever heard us blame a boy or a girl for wanting to dance.

I think I know how to sympathize with them at that point. I frankly confess it was one of the temptations of my youth, and I also admit that even now I find it difficult to keep my feet still at the sound of the fiddle.I know it is easy for some people to tell others they ought not to be tempted, and I have noticed that such people almost always take the points at which they are not tempted and talk about them.

I was in a meeting not long since in North Dakota, and a pastor said, “One night in my prayer meeting, when a good many of the young people were present, and the Spirit of God seemed to be moving them, one after another of the young men and young women rose, and with tears in their eyes and with quivering lips, said, ‘We have been dancing and we are losing out in our spiritual lives. Bible study is a task; prayer is no longer pleasant, and we have decided to give up the dance.’ And so one followed another until the whole house melted at sight of the battles waging in the breasts of these boys and girls, in which the Spirit of God seemed to be conquering. Finally an old fellow who had lived the life of a bachelor, got up. His unkempt hair and his uncut whiskers reminded one of George Ade’s description of the farmer from whose beard one could stir up a meadow lark and two field mice almost any moment. In addition to this uncanny appearance he was crippled from head to toe with rheumatism so that when he rose to speak he had to help himself by hanging to the seat in front of him, and by ejaculations of pain as he slowly untangled. But once up and free, he said, ‘I have been listening to the testimony of these frivolous young folks, and I want to thank God that I have no temptations to such worldliness!’ ”I suppose he thought his testimony was an expression of virtue, but it was not; and I have little doubt that he had habits of life far more offensive both to God and man than were the dances the young people were striving to surrender for the sake of Christ and His Church.I admit the force of the argument that the dance is a natural expression of youth and health.

I am not out of sympathy with young people because they want to do it. In fact, I think the desire is a part of one’s physical constitution, and is felt in proportion to the strength of his heart beat.

And yet, be it remembered that youth is not alone in this desire. Long after nimbleness has left the limbs the lusts to which the round dance appeals lives in the lives of men and women, and many of them illustrate the words of Sam Jones. He said, “I have been a young fool; I am free to admit that. I have been a middle-aged fool, and I am sorry about that, and I am praying earnestly now that the Lord will just keep me from being an old fool. You see that is the last wag of the hammer. You take an old widower, for instance! I was sitting in a car some time ago, and an old widower walked in. I suppose he was eighty years old, his nose and chin nearly met.

He took a seat near me and began to brag of his health. He said he hadn’t felt better in forty years, and he said, ‘They tease me about marrying again, and I don’t know but that I will.’ I suspect the old rascal had rubbed every joint of his limbs with Wizard Oil before he could get out of bed that morning.” There are quite a few of the wizard-oil brethren found in the ball-room today, and they are morally the most dangerous fellows that appear there.Again, they say it is an essential education in graceful movement. A few years ago it was quite the custom with ball-room folk to remind the public that a man was not adapted to an evening occasion who could not dance. He was told that in all probability, by the blundering movements of his feet, beautiful costumes would be stained or torn. But that argument will hold no longer. There is no train; there is not even a skirt—only an abbreviated hint of the same; so that the old silken train is no longer in danger of being trampled upon, and any awkward man, uneducated in this terpsichorean art, could enter a dance hall without danger of trampling on anything more important than unprotected toes.The old-fashioned folk dances did meet the natural desire of youth to move to music, and were free from the moral perils of even the waltz, not to speak of the later hugging devices of the devil.

President Hall of Clark University, when lecturing before the Ypsilanti Normal College, once said, “The dance is the best exercise for developing every muscle of the body, and I am glad it is being taught in our gymnasiums. By this I mean the dance like that of the religious dances of the early races, the tragic chorus of the Greeks, the dance that embodies racial and national characteristics, that expresses poetry, love, fear, joy, natural emotion, that exemplifies every industry and development of the races; that teaches self-control and the power to express the highest emotion of the soul.

Such dancing vitalizes; it makes one conscious of the joy of being alive, and I think it is a shame that it has been allowed to die out, and our young people reduced to the miserable effete, decadent dance of the modern ball room—a thing contemptible, of insignificant culture value and usually stained with undesirable associations, and unworthy of an intelligent people.”But even that lone dance has been debased by women who strip for its rendition.One of the defenders of the school dance, appearing before a school board, said, “I saw the heathen dance a while ago, and I said how natural and how desirable,” but she forgot to say that even the heathen would be shocked by the American method. In fact, it is not so many years since, a representative of the Japanese government, taken to the ballroom of the White House, looked upon the evening’s procedure, dazed by what he saw, and when asked if he would participate, flatly refused.We believe in grace of movement, and we do not blame young people for wanting to dance the round dance; that desire is also natural. But no man should preach the Gospel of yielding life to its natural desires. Such a gospel is the antithesis of the Christian ministry.Yes, it is a manifestation of the social temperament. Young people delight to be together, and by Divine appointment, they delight most in the fellowship of the opposite sex. We advocate co-education.

My advocacy has rested upon my experience. I look back to the years ‘81—’85, spent in a college in which young men and women sat together in the same classes, and I have not a single regret over that delightful relationship.

I never knew brothers who revealed more chivalry toward their sisters in the flesh than the men of that college showed toward the women of the same. The sexes were mutually advantaged. Not a marriage occurring out of that college fellowship has been annulled by the divorce court, with a single exception; and it is significant that that exception applies to the case of the young man and young woman, both of whom were cultured in the ball-room art, and used to slip away to a near-by city to indulge themselves in that art. But in the years of our stay together, school authorities never once opened any hall to the round dance; and if young men and women slipped away from the school to some public hall, they were haled before the faculty, criticized, counseled and warned not to repeat the act. We did not always approve the position of the faculty at that time. We were sometimes fretted by their “old foggy” notions; but now that the men, who thus jealously guarded youth against what they believed to be a doubtful pastime if not a very dangerous one, are gone, we know that they were the most loyal friends lads and lassies ever knew.THE DIGNITY OF THE DANCEis also often referred to.

We are reminded that it is linked with the beautiful art of music. We are compelled to remember that it is associated with splendid dress; and if a man is observant, he knows that it is the peculiar pastime of the prospered.Music is easily one of the fine arts!

More can be said in favor of it than of almost any other art known to history. Painting and sculpture alike have come under an appalling curse. It is regarded very narrow to so much as make mention of the fact, and yet, the great Tolstoi, whose sacrifices for the social, mental and moral uplift of his people, have never been surpassed since the day when the Son of Man suffered on Calvary, braved public opinion, and, like the courageous soul he was, excoriated “the nude in art”. He tells us that certain artists freely affirm that “we must not demand morality in art”, and then, after an argument of 184 pages, he makes this declaration, “Rather that there be no art at all than continue the depraving art, or simulation of art, which now exists.”You say that is an extreme position. That would depend entirely upon whether one esteemed culture or character most highly; upon whether one valued polished marble or perfect morals, the painted canvas or exemplary conduct. Now, while music is in itself a veritable gift from God, when one remembers the scandalous dress in which some singers appear and the fetid associations of certain fiddlers, and the intimate relationship between the dance hall, the grog shop and the bagnio, he knows that even this art, noble as it was by its very nature, has also been prostituted to unholy ends; and by no invention of the devil more so than by the modern round dance.Some time since an Eastern preacher, adopting the spirit of the world from which he received his salary, attempted to defend the dance by quotations from the Bible, and among others he gave Mark 6:22, “The daughter of Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod”, apparently forgetting that it was this same daughter who so far exploited herself in the presence of the king as to draw from him the drunken pledge of giving her whatsoever she asked; and that same daughter, trained in the dance, at the suggestion of her mother who, doubtless was as adept in the same, demanded the head of John the Baptist on a charger!

Music and dancing were responsible for one of the first martyrdoms in the Church of God.As to the dress with which the dance is associated, it would be almost as difficult to defend that as to defend the dance itself. We love pretty clothes.

We like to see women beautifully dressed; but we candidly believe that the surest indication of the character of the dance itself is voiced in the dress of the women who are ball-room patrons. It is notoriously a display of such parts of the person as God expects to be covered: When a deliberate appeal is made to both the lusts of the flesh and the lust of the eye, even though it come from high social position and arrays itself in silks, a minister must have a very flexible conscience if he can bring himself to defend the conduct.Some years ago the Christian Standard said, “After all our squirming and twisting and arguing and explaining (and even attempting to explain away) our Bibles, still they put it in plain black and white, ‘I will * * that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; * * but with good works’,” and then continues, “Is any woman’s apparel modest that exposes her person like the apparel of some church women does? Is it any use for a woman to claim and profess ‘purity’ whose scant apparel is shockingly suggestive of impurity? ‘Shamefacedness’ does not spell ‘brazenfacedness’.”It was these patent things that led Mrs. General Sherman to say, “I have always given the round dance a silent condemnation, and have refused to let my daughters participate in it under any circumstances.” And it was this patent fact that led General Pike of Washington to declare, “The waltz is only fit for houses of prostitution.” What would he say of our present lustful movements? It was this patent fact that led Mr. Joseph Brown, former mayor of St.

Louis, to say, “It is a shame that society countenances such things.” The late Dr. George Lorimer was never regarded as an extremist, but he was pronounced one of the greatest preachers of America, and as one converted from the stage, he was familiar with that side of life; and he said, speaking of the dress of the dance, “These displays are, as a rule, only made by those whose charms are conspicuous.

Rarely will a narrow-chested, scraggy, yellow-necked female bare herself to the mocking eyes of those around her.” Yet, that these fashions are for somebody’s eyes, no one doubts. Whose? It is a pertinent question. Divinity is sometimes bedrabbled, and we candidly believe that no amount of rustling silks can bind thinking men to the sin resulting from the combination of the modern dance and the modern dress.Undoubtedly this dance is the pastime of the prospered. One writer, at least, has asked that we provide proof of that statement, and has excoriated it as a cowardly attempt to array classes against each other. A newspaper, of a day preceding the appearance of his article, would have given him proof, had he read it.

There the social elite of the Avenue were reported as going the full length of even the most disgusting dances. The same paper reported the plain Scandinavian people of this city as in absolute revolt against the whole movement; and even the Waitress’ Association as putting the ban upon those so-called social stunts.We would like to challenge the principals of our High Schools to provide the public the names of those young people who have been accustomed to attend the class dances, sure that such a report would show that the big majority of those attending come from homes of ease, if not luxury.

The preachers who appear to defend the modern round dance are almost, without exception, the pastors of rich congregations, where this pastime is largely indulged in. An observing man, and a courageous minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in speaking upon the decadence of Lot’s family life in Sodom, says a very suggestive thing: “On the suburban train the other day, coming into London, a man was speaking of one of his fellows who had fallen out of the line of success, and he remarked somewhat glibly, “In these days, it is each man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost’.” And then the minister comments, “That is the gospel men are preaching outside. Here in the sanctuary of God, I say that is not true. In the majority of cases the devil gets the foremost.”Minneapolis is illustrating those words a thousand times a day. The men that made Minneapolis were trained in the school of adversity, and in the blessing of “bearing the yoke in youth”. Their boys and girls will, in all too many cases, make mere beaux and belles, we fear.

There are exceptions to every rule, and we thank God every time we see young men and women come out of houses of culture or wealth, and, like the younger Pitt, prove themselves the equals of noble sires, the superiors of worthy mothers. Thank God, some such there are!

But, on the contrary, what a multitude of pygmies are turned out of palaces. How can you expect else when you weakly yield to every appeal for pastime and gladly feed their passion for pleasure. These are not the things that make great men and good women.But we cannot finish the discussion of this text without calling your attention toTHE DEATH IN THE DANCE“In a moment they go down to the grave.“Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways” (Job 21:13-14).To say the least, that death is threefold.It is death to serious thoughts. Every dance is death to serious thoughts. We do not object to the folk-dance within limits. But even the folk-dance flings away serious thought.

True, young men and young women ought not to be asked to be forever serious. We can afford sometimes to forget the serious things of life, but if any safety abide, the season of such forgetting must be brief.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne only lived thirty-three summers, but he moved the whole world for good and for God in that brief space, and made for himself an immortal name, and left behind him a history as beautiful as blessed. Robert M’Cheyne, pleading with some young people to forsake the world, said, “What has the world done for you that you love it so much? Did the world die for you? Will the world blot out your sins or change your heart? Will the world carry you to Heaven? No! No! You may go back to the world if you please, but it can only destroy your poor soul. ‘She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth’.

Read these words and mark them in your Bible, and if you go back that mark will be a witness against you. Have you not lived long enough in pleasure? Come and try the pleasures of Christ—forgiveness and a new heart. I have not been to a dance for many years, and yet I believe I have had more pleasure in a single day than you have had in all your life.” Can any one conceive of Robert M’Cheyne having kept up the dance, and yet at the same time as having lived such a wonderful life and wrought such a wonderful work?It is also death to moral sentiment. Any subject can be debated. Truly, there are two sides to every subject; but, as one man, speaking of the liquor traffic, said, “It only amounts to this: There is a right side and a wrong side.” That is absolutely true with reference to the round dance.

Any minister who says that it is not morally perilous, has not been observant, or else, for the sake of carrying his point, and meeting the demands of the multitude, he is willing to be morally dishonest. Is it not a singular circumstance that at the very moment that the modern stage critics are telling us that the modern stage is immoral, ministers are rising in its defense; and is not sad that when such men as converted dancing masters are writing such books as “From the Ball Room to Hell”, preachers, occupying evangelical pulpits, are trying to bring the public to believe that it is an entirely innocent pas-time?

How true that statement in Scripture, “like people: like priest” (Hosea 4:9).And then, often the dance is death to the immortal soul. Only a bit ago one of the same papers that is now defending this proposition, told, in pitiful words, of a poor nineteen-year-old girl picked out of an alley one morning. She was ragged, hungry and freezing, and the paper said that “this bedraggled, degraded and dying creature was only a year ago a radiant little girl from the country, who began her downfall by flirting at a dance hall.” I suppose we are to imagine that if the flirting occurred with the consent of the public school beard, and by the provisions of its act, kindred consequences cannot follow. But the imaginations of some of us are not capable of such a stretch. A morning paper gave a conspicuous place to the story of the foolish girl in Chicago who had agreed to mortgage her soul for a thousand dollars. Her name was Maud LaPage.

She was twenty-four years of age, and was what Mr. Dooley would call “poetry struck”, saying, “Yes, I will mortgage my soul and they can foreclose it, and do what they please with me if they will only hand over the thousand dollars.

I aspire to a life other than one endless grind of selling a dab of bolonga, or of measuring out macaroni, or wrapping boxes of smelly sardines. Ambitions such as mine are smothered in the odors of the shop.” Poor girl, it never once occurred to her that after she had her thousand dollars and invested it in publishing a “book of poetry”, there might not be a single buyer, and she might lose her soul without even the gratification of knowing that the world applauded her poetic endeavor.But the proposition to barter her soul was upon higher ground than when another woman puts her soul in barter for an hour of sensual pleasure. Dwight L. Moody tells the story of a girl, the daughter of a rich house, who walked past the sanctuary on the Sabbath. The Gospel music attracted her within doors, and the Gospel sermon got hold of her heart. She went home to her parents to declare her desire to lead the Christian life.

They were in the world and of it. They laughed and jeered her, but failing to turn her from her thought, they converted their home into a dance hall, dressed this daughter in silks, and debecked her with jewels and made her the hostess of the hour.

And as they hoped, she yielded, forgot her serious thought, and threw herself into the evening with such a passion as she had never known. Then, heated, she sat in a window, and the unprotected shoulders were smitten with cold and eight days later she lay dying with pneumonia. As the end approached, she said to her mother, “Bring me my ball dress,” and the mother, thinking its beauty would give her pleasure, went for it. But when she brought it to the bedside, the girl lifted her hands and cried, “Oh, my God! that dress was the price of my soul!” and breathed her last.You say you doubt the story? No, you do not. It has been enacted too often.

History is replete with its illustration. And tonight, there is no one thing that stands as stubbornly between many of the souls that hear me and the Son of God as this very social pastime.

I conclude with a question: “Will you give it up and take Christ?”

Job 21:15

THE PROFIT OF Job_21:15THIS text phrases a question which occurs again and again in the Book of Job. As far back as its first chapter Satan charged Job with serving God that he might secure a selfish profit from the same. When his counsellors were about him we hear Eliphaz, the Temanite, putting into the lips of wicked men this phrase, “What can the Almighty do for them”? (Job 22:17). While just a little later Elihu quotes Job, perhaps unjustly, with having said, “It profiteth a man nothing that he should delight himself with God” (Job 34:9).The question of the profit of personal religion is as old as the ages; and yet as new as the hour in which we live, and I want you to think with me about it for a while. This text, strictly applied, would cover only the profit of prayer, but more liberally interpreted, the whole subject of religion.THE OF PROFITOne essential in clear thinking is the definition of terms. When we employ the word “profit” what do we mean?

Gain in gold only? God forbid!

That is not the greatest profit. Exaltation to position? That is not sufficient!Profit cannot be expressed in dollars and cents. At this very point many people get wry notions of religion. Think of a man uniting himself with a church, and rendering it an indifferent service for two or three years and then dropping out. When the Pastor visited him he said, “Well, I have been a member of that church for three years.

It has never turned any money into my pocket as yet; never helped me in securing a position; nor in any way profited me so far as I can see.” Could religion be reduced to a grosser conception, or phrased in sentences more intensely selfish?Poor Peter! Before his baptism of the Spirit, he fell into such error, and on one occasion, he said to Jesus, “We have forsaken all, and followed Thee; what shall we have therefore”?

As if the question of increased treasure were the only possible profit in this present life. Some years since a steamer laden with passengers from the gold fields of the Klondike, homeward bound, struck an iceberg off the coast of Alaska and went down. The next day a newspaper flashed the news from one end of the land to the other, containing the testimony of the saved of the sights upon which they had looked in connection with their shipwreck. Two of them were after this manner: “Mr H— had forty thousand dollars in gold dust, which he abandoned and reached the shore in safety. Mr. K— had forty thousand dollars in gold dust to which he clung and weighted by his treasure, he sank and we never saw him any more!”The man who considers an increase of silver and gold as the only possible profit will pay the price of life for his philosophy and will be raising the question, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul”?The question of profit does not necessarily involve position.

There are men who love prominence and power beyond all possible possessions. The successful world is somewhat equally divided between commercial men and professional men.

The former deliberately declare wealth to be the chief good; and the latter are as evidently in search of honor instead. But as “a man’s life consistent not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” so also a man’s life consisteth not in the possible eminence to which he may attain. The best and wisest men I have known have been willing to put aside proffered position when it conflicted with their personal relations with God. And they have considered such action, not loss, but gain.The riches of this present life are not expressed by silver and gold; and position and power only. Dr. John Robertson, when he was yet proclaiming the Gospel of the Son of God, told the story of the man who went from New York to his home in Brooklyn, bankrupt.

Entering his house he flung himself down without eating and moaned, “It is all gone! Our firm has stopped payment!

We have nothing left! We are not only bankrupt but our reputation is ruined!” And the strong man was inconsolable in his grief. While he lay there repeating over and over, “All is gone; nothing left!” his little daughter, a beautiful curly-headed child, entered the room. With a soft tread, and a sympathizing heart, she pressed her curly head against him and said, “Papa, I am left.” And the wife, sitting by and hearing the words, came and said, “I am left.” And the old grandmother, from her corner, came and said, “Son, and all the promises are left. God is not dead!” He sat up and cried, “Forgive me, I did not appreciate how much I had left”There was a day when Saul was on his way to Damascus. He was the best educated young man of his time; he was descended from the noblest house of Judah; he was the most promising young official in the Sanhedrin; his inherited wealth was such as to make a living easy; and the following of his profession a delightful pastime.

But ere the journey was done Jesus was revealed to him as Lord. His family disowned him; his inheritance was taken away; his official position was lost; his good name among the Jews became a hissing and a byword.

Go, stand before that scholar and ask him whether there be any profit in personal religion, and listen to the eloquence of his answer:“If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more;“Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the Law, a Pharisee;“Concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteousness which is in the Law blameless.“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.“Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,“And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith;“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death;“If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.“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.“Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.“Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing” (Philippians 3:4-16).Profit, then, is measured by personal godliness. Jesus once faced a company who were so sordid that even His eloquence could not win them from questions of silver and gold. His appeal was, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal”. And His assertion was, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”, as if the Kingdom of God was the essential good; or, as Henry Drummond, puts it, “Summum bonum”, or “the highest possible profit.” Mr. Tanksley, meeting an old colored man said, “Good morning, Uncle Ned. Do you carry any insurance?” “Does I car’y what?” asked Uncle Ned in surprise. “Do you carry any insurance?

Is your life insured?” asked Mr. Tanksley, by way of explanation. “Bless Gawd! yas, yas,” replied the colored man, “long ago—long ago.” “In what company?” “I’m a Baptis, sah; I’m a deep-watah Baptis,” said Uncle Ned. “How long since you joined?” “I j’ined,” said Uncle Ned, “de same yeah dat de stars fell—I reckon you know how long dat’s been?” “That’s a long while,” commented the insurance man. “Quite a long while.” “Does your company pay any dividends?” “Boss,” said Uncle Ned with a broad grin, “dat is a question way out ob my reach.” “Why, Uncle Ned, a dividend is interest paid on your money; and if you’ve been paying your money into one company for more than thirty years, surely you ought to have been receiving your dividends long before now, especially if it is an old-line company!”“Well,” said Uncle Ned, “hit sho’ is a ole-line comp’ny.

De Lawd sot hit up Hiss’f way bac’ yon-dah on Calvaree’s tree. But I ain’t nebeh heard tell o’ no dividens, ner nuthin’ o’ dat sawt. De fac is, it is free! I ain’t neber paid nothin’ to be insured. I has done got my soul sabed widout a cents’ cost.”“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Tanksley, “You have misunderstood me, Uncle Ned.

You are talking about your soul.” “Dat is what I was.” “Well, I want to talk to you about your body. You may have an accident, or sickness, or death.” “Yes, sir; I may hab dem all!”“Now, insurance can’t prevent them, but it can help you in your time of trouble.” “Well, sir, if dat is what you mean by gettin insured, den it mus be de ole-line company’s all right, cause I hab been in de ole-line since de stars fell, and it sho’ has hepped me in time of trouble.”Personal religion is profitable at every point. “Does it pay, I wonder, to toil for gold Till the back is bowed and bent,Till the heart is old and the hair is white, And life’s best days are spent:Till the eyes are blind with the yellow dust That we strive for day by day,Till all we hear is the coin’s dull clink— I wonder, does it pay?‘Does it pay, I wonder, to never stop, In the ceaseless rush and care,And list to the songs of bird and brook, Or wander through woodlands fair:To never think of what lies beyond The narrow sphere of today,Till the new life dawns on our untried souls— I wonder, does it pay?”Godliness is profitable for the life that now is.That brings us to the discussion of the second subject:THIS PRESENT LIFE“The life that now is”. Man is threefold in his nature—body, soul (or mind), and spirit. Does the service of God profit for this present life? I make three assertions without fear of successful contradiction.First—The body is better off for true religion. Did you ever ask yourself why it was that the children of the Puritan parents endured hardship, survived starvation, conquered climate, cleared forests, overcame the aborigines, and finally, when the demand was made upon them, though so few in numbers, were more than a match at arms with the great mother country, England? The practice of the precepts of Jesus Christ by their fathers produced a generation of children in whose veins the blood ran clear while the heart beat strong; and they were men of might and power.

They were not; the weaklings such as Sodomites have brought forth from time immemorial; but men who literally filled up the description of the Anakim of old, given by the ten cowardly spies.Dwight Hillis was altogether right when he said, “The child’s birth-stock of vital force is his capital to be traded upon. Other things being equal his productive value is to be estimated mathematically upon the basis of physique.

Born weak and nerveless, he must go to society’s ambulance wagon, and so impede the onward march. Born vigorous and rugged, he can help to clear the forest roadway, or lead the advancing columns. Fundamentally man is a muscular machine for producing the ideas that shape conduct and character. All fine thinking stands with one foot on fine brain fiber. Given large physical organs, lungs with capacity sufficient to oxygenate the life-currents as they pass upward; large arteries through which the blood may have full course, run, and be glorified; a brain healthy and balanced with a compact nervous system, and you have the basis for computing what will be man’s value to society.” There has never been introduced into this world anything that contributes to physical manhood comparable to the religion of Jesus Christ.A man’s mind is invigorated by the religion of Jesus. The world’s one ideal, when considered from a moral standpoint, is the Man of Nazareth. “Never man spake like this Man”.

The educated of two thousand years have frankly confessed His splendid superiority. Some of you remember the cartoon designed for the French Pantheon, called “The Staircase of Voltaire,” in which that great infidel is represented at the top of the staircase, while the many philosophers of the age are pictured as ascending to his presence, or descending therefrom.

It is said that the purpose of the cartoon was to present the idea that Voltaire was the great teacher of his age, and that only as men went to him to have their opinions corrected, their minds filled with instruction, were they fitted to descend into the midst of the masses and teach what they had thus learned. It is nothing short of sacrilege to give to this bigoted unbeliever such exalted position; or even, by suggestion, to set him up as the teacher of teachers. It is the concession of infidel and believer alike that this position belongs to the Man of Nazareth. “Hushed be the noise and the strife of the school, Volume and pamphlet, sermon and speech,The lips of the wise and the prattle of fools; Let the Son of Man teach!“Who has the key to the Future but He? Who can unravel the knots of the skein?We have groaned and have travailed and sought to be free; We have travailed in vain.“Bewildered, dejected, and prone to despair, To Him as at first do we turn and beseech:‘Our ears are all open! Give heed to our prayer! Oh, Son of Man, teach!’ ”The spirit is inspired by the religion of Jesus. From the day when they crucified Him, His call to the noblest of men has resulted in utter consecration. What other philosophy ever made souls to be so sincere; accomplished in them such courage; wrought through them such heroism; made of them such martyrs, as the religion of the Man of Nazareth? Truly, as the poet said: “If a man aspire to reach the throne of God,O’er the dull plains of earth must lie his road.He who best does his lowly duty here Shall mount the highest in a nobler sphere;At God’s own feet our spirits seek their rest,And he is nearest Him who serves Him best.”THE ETERNAL We have already appealed to the inspired Word, “Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come”.There is a hereafter! Men may be as unbelieving as they will; that in no wise militates against the fact of the great future. Prof. Austin Phelps once told the story of a distinguished professor in Germany, Dr. Paulus by name, who in his teaching had opposed the belief in immortality, and had done his best to so impress his students. When he came to die he sent for a number of the students, and when they stood about the bed, he said, “Gentlemen, I have sent for you to show you how a man believing and teaching as I have done, can die.

I do not want any one to think I weakened at the last moment. I am about to die and that will be the end of it.” While the students stood about the bed the old professor sank into a comatose condition.

Suddenly he started up, and with a strange light in his eyes, cried, “There is a hereafter!” And then sank on his pillow and died. Possibly he had had a vision. Who knows? At any rate God would not permit him to leave the world, leaving as his last testimony to it such a lie, for “there is a hereafter!” The religion of Jesus Christ deals with it.It illuminates the valley of death. Victor Hugo, that marvelous man of Letters, and greatest of all French authors, said, “I feel in myself the future life. I am rising, I know, toward the sky. The sunshine is over my head. Heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds.

The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song—I have tried them all. But I feel I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. I can say, like so many others, ‘I have finished my day’s work,’ but I cannot say, ‘I have finished my life.’ My day’s work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open with the dawn. My work is only beginning.”That is the thing of which Mr. Moody was thinking, aye, rather that is the fact which Mr.

Moody was experiencing, when he said, “Earth is receding; Heaven is opening—God is calling. This is my coronation day!”It promises victory over the grave. How can we forget the illustration that A. J. Gordon used of the man who had lost his child, his darling. His heart was broken. In his bereavement life seemed not worth the living. Under the cover of darkness he sought the cemetery and slept on her grave.

While he slept he dreamed. He saw One descending from Heaven. His hair was as white as snow; his eyes were as flames of fire; his feet as brass; at his side a girdle, and on the girdle a great key, and as he approached the grave that locked in the loved one, he laid his hand upon it, and with a voice like the sound of many waters, was heard to say, “Fear not; I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death”, And from that moment his sorrow was gone, for though he waked, he remembered that the Master shall“descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:“Then we that are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).That is our profit; every grave shall open and the bodies of every believer and every babe shall rise transformed and glorified. Such is the eternal prospect.The religion of Christ pictures an open Heaven. Neither death nor the grave is the end, for beyond that lies the City of God, four square, almost unthinkable in its extent and inconceivable in its glory, the eternal habitation of the redeemed. Have you ever read the Rabbinical tradition of the death of Aaron?

On one side of the great priest stood his brother Moses; and on the other side of him, his son Eleazar. They kissed the dying man on the brow and took from him his priestly vestments to clothe Eleazar with them.

They took off one portion of the sacred apparel and laid that on Eleazar. As they stripped Aaron a silvery veil like a cloud fell over him like a pall and he seemed to sleep. Then Moses said, “My brother, what dost thou feel?” “I feel nothing but the cloud that envelops me. The cloud surrounds me and bereaves me of all joy.” Then the soul of Aaron was parted from its body, and as it went up, Moses cried again, “Alas, my brother, what dost thou feel?” And the spirit replied, “I feel such joy that I would it had come to me sooner!”Such is the Christian’s conception of stepping from this world into the next. As he dwelt upon the certainty of that coming, Lord Tennyson wrote: “Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me;And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea.“But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.“For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.”