"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" and yet how many a man is risking his soul for a much lower stake than "the whole world." For reputation, for wealth, for worldly glory; aye, and even less than these, for a life of pleasure and of sin, for an hour’s enjoyment, for a bubble, for a shadow, a thing that is gone almost before it is grasped. For any of these will a man risk his soul: his eternal blessing, for eternal woe.
It is but a small bit of the world at most, that you or I can grasp. How limited is the amount which even the wisest, the wealthiest, the mightiest can call their own; while the greater mass of men live and die, come and go, in suffering, in poverty, and in sin, unknown and unremembered. They live their little span (how little a one!) and are gone, having, while here, gambled away their eternity, and for a life of worldliness, of pleasure, or of sin, LOST THEIR OWN SOULS.
MAN knows not the value of a soul, or he would not risk it as he does. "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
GOD knows the value of a soul, and when He weighs in the balance the soul in one scale, and the whole world in the other, He declares the gain of the world to be nothing, compared with the loss of the soul.
And, knowing this, what has God done? Knowing that no man can save himself or "keep alive his own soul," forfeited by sin, God has given His Son, the Just One, for us, the unjust. "CHRIST HAS DIED," has shed "the blood which maketh atonement for the soul." "The precious blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin." He is the substitute for the sinner, the Savior of the lost. His word to such is, "Come unto ME, and I will give you rest.”
Reader, if you are still unsaved, still leaving your soul at stake, still, like a desperate gambler, risking your ALL for ETERNITY for a little more of the world, or of pleasure, or of sin, "we beseech you in Christ's name, be ye reconciled to God; for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." Look to Jesus, who bore the sinner's judgment, the sinner’s curse, who paid the sinner's debt, and give up at once, and forever, your desperate game. See in "the precious blood of Christ" a full satisfaction for sin, and TRUST it. Receive from God that gift of eternal life which is in and from His Son. Behold, " I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that you may live." H. C. J. B.