There are some things we cannot afford to buy. St. Paul gives a long list, and the price at which they are to be purchased. He says, "Adultery, fortification, uncleanness, laciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such like, of which I tell you before, that they which do such things shall not in-hent eternal life." Surely none but a fool would pay such a calamitous price? For such a one is in a class with Judas when he exchanged an Apostles glory for money selling his Lord and Master for a slave's ransom, a paltry thirty pieces of silver. Or David who threw into the balance his proud name of "the man after God's own heart," in exchange for an hour's passion with its train of suffering and shame. Or Esau in the old Bible story, who bartered his birth-right with all its glorious privilege and responsibility, for a mess of red pottage, a meal a savoury morsel that would but satisfy the hunger of the moment.
And just as there are some things We cannot afford to buy, so there are other things we cannot afford to be without. We must seek them earnestly and buy them whatever be the cost in sacrifice and endurance. And among them are the things which St, Paul enumerates as the marks of Christian character, which are the fruits of the spirit, "Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." For we must, if necessary crucify the flesh with all its lusts and desires.
It has been said that it is possible to estimate the moral worth of a man or woman if you can discover two things—what they can, and what they cannot do without. May I suggest that we each one ask ourselves a few test questions along that line this morning? Are the things of God,—Spiritual values, Christian character with its marks of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, and the like becoming more and more the indispensable things of life? Or are we willing to do without them? And are the things of the world, the pleasures of sense, the indulgences of the flesh, and worldly possessions, and the love of money—becoming more and more the end of our ambition and the source of our satisfaction. The things we cannot do without? If so, let us go down on Our knees ths morning and pray God to give us a true realization of relative values before it is too late. For he makes a tragic bargain who sells his soul for the world, who gets rich and powerful perhaps, but in the process, sacrifices generous impulses and affections, His interest in clean, decent, noble things, his principles and his religion. Such a one will find all his gains are empty and unsatisfactory. Find indeed, that he has lost himself in the truest sense, in gaining the world. The tragedy being that he has not really gained the world at all but been mastered by it.
"For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul.... And what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.