Is there then no death for a word once spoken?

Was never a deed but left its token?

Do pictures of all the ages live—

On nature's infinite negative?

This is what influence-that potent power of every human life-really means. And the debts incurred through its posses

sion will be known in their entirety only when the secrets of every human heart and the outcome of every human life shall be revealed.

Only a word more about the last and greatest of these ledger accounts,-God. This really sums them all up. If God "is, and is the rewarder of those that diligently seek him," then in him we live and move and have our being. We owe everything to him, and what we have to pay to balance every account, comes at last to him. What then are we doing to help ourselves in squaring our obligation to him? How far short comes the best endeavor! There are some who even overlook or repudiate their debts to him. Even of those who acknowledge his claims, how few do more than give him a beggarly hour or two in the week, and begrudge it if they are called to make sacrifice on his behalf. Ought there not to be a toning up of our sense of obligation in relation to God? Should not our lives show at least some sort of acknowledgment of dependence on him? We cannot hope to pay our debts. God has put us under obligation not only by providing for our wants, surrounding us with comforts and opportunities, but also by helping us in the midst of trials and difficulties into which we have fallen by our own obstinacy and ignorance, and has given us a revelation of himself in the Bible and in his Son, Jesus Christ.

But there is a brighter side. God has given man the privilege of paying his obligations and satisfying the divine claims by a wonderful method,-agreeing to take man with all his debts into the firm, making him a partner in the concern. All this is on one condition, that you and I will enter the business, and make it our one aim, our chief purpose, to forward the enterprises which God has in hand. These enterprises are the

highest and noblest known to man. They involve the love of God and man, the upbuilding of character and righteousness, the bringing of the divine kingdom of peace and good will toward all. Shall we agree? Then we can close this ledger to-night with good hope. For he who is our principal Creditor cancels the indebtedness and places at our disposal a capital the like of which we never had before.

Shall we refuse? Then I know no way of escape from bankruptcy. False entries cannot deceive the Eye that looks through all deceit. Even other men will find out at last that you are a sham, and your own self will clamor for its due in vain, and you will loathe yourself. And then you will come before the great white throne, and "the books will be opened," where all the great debt is revealed, and you will not find from God above, society about, or self within you wherewith to cancel it. There will be seen as in letters of fire streaming through these accounts the secret cipher of your past and the solved riddle of your future.

This ledger of life is an important volume, the most important you have in your library. It may not be encouraging to turn it over and behold how tremendously the balance inclines to the opposite side. Yet to open the eyes, and fairly to face the problem, is the beginning of its solution. And with God, the principal creditor, as the friend and helper of man, we need not fear. With his aid and in his service, we shall succeed in paying our utmost obligation to self and to society, both in thought, in word, in deed, and in influence. We shall have the honor and satisfaction of laying up treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.

Life's Great Guide Book.

Τ

THE

REV. P. S. HENSON, D.D., Pastor First Baptist Church, Chicago.

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HE first recorded word of God is, "Let there be light." He covereth himself with light as with a garment. He 'dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto." He is "the Father of lights," and "in him is no darkness at all." Heaven is all ablaze with the light of his countenance. The celestial city "hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God doth lighten it." And that makes heaven.

"In his presence there is fullness of joy." Removal from that presence means utter darkness, and that makes hell.

Earth swings midway between heaven and hell, and hence, though not involved in rayless gloom, it is shrouded in darkness that may be felt; and men grope about upon it very much as did the men of Sodom, when they sought Lot's door on the night of doom.

The light that once bathed it has been eclipsed by the intervention of sin's dark shadow. Some little things that lie very near we may be able to discover, but the great things, far-reaching as eternity, and tremendous as the judgment, we cannot see at all. Upon the most momentous questions that ever engaged a human soul there is absolutely no light shed by earthly philosophy. What am I? and Whence am I? and Whither am I bound? and What is my duty? My danger? My destiny? These are questions before which all the oracles of earth are dumb. In the innermost chamber of the human soul a faint and flickering light is shining, and we call it conscience, but it is like the smoking lamp in a miserable Lapland hut, that only makes the