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more than he would lose. Yes; to go where God commands, and to do what God commands, though loss may come of it, is truly not a disdaining of consequences; it is a fuller and truer weighing of consequences! It is to look farther on; it is to throw Eternity into the scale of duty and interest; it is to draw the wise and sound conclusion, that what is wrong can never be truly expedient; because it would be no profit, none whatsoever, to gain the whole world, and to lose the immortal soul! There are always consequences from our conduct, whether we go this way or that; and the wise man will weigh the consequences upon either side. And the prophet asks the king to do just that, telling him that if he does it he will see that the true gain is all on the side of obeying God. On the one side there were a hundred talents; on the other side there was the favor of God; and the question for the king to consider was just this: which was worth most? And many a time, in little things and great, we are all brought to just that choice, and that calculation. The immediate consequence of our doing right may be that we shall make a loss; and we may feel it hard to resign our minds to the loss of the hundred talents, the little gain in money, in standing, in pleasure, in advantage of any kind, that we might easily get by doing wrong. But oh, let us always look for the confirmation of principle, and of the determination to take the right way, to the farther and greater and longer-lasting consequences: God's

blessing on the honest and right way, God's wrath and curse upon the wrong and false way! And never forget, that, if in this world the consequences of taking the right way be sometimes loss, and misconception, and undeserved reproach, and failure, and coldness of friends; if the man of high principle and scrupulous honor may oftentimes fail to reach the worldly place and profit which men of lower tone and more elastic conscience succeed in grasping; if pliable and squeezable men are found to rise high both in earthly gains and earthly reputation: never forget that the next world will set all that right; the next world will redress the consequences of all human doings. And never fail to set in the front of all your calculations of the consequences of what men do the Saviour's memorable question, "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Yes, upon the most prudent counting up of loss and gain, it was worth while to be a martyr! And if the scorching stake or the bloody scaffold could be escaped only by denying the Redeemer, then deliverance from these things was too dear at the price!

So I do not ask you, my friends, in asking you to make up your mind that, by God's help and grace, you will make God's will your rule, and walk where God points your way; I do not ask you to disdain consequences; I ask you to weigh the consequences of all your conduct, carefully and deliberately. Only

see to it that you remember that there are consequences of all we do, which reach on through eternity; that our "works will follow us beyond the grave, both in the character they stamp upon us, and in the awful responsibility which comes of this truth, that we must answer for every word and deed at the throne of judgment. It is indeed a miserable and unworthy thing to weigh consequences in that petty fashion in which many do, and, when duty is plain, to be always thinking, What will such a one say? Won't this give offence to such another? May not all this do me harm, somehow? My friends, if God has made the path of duty plain before us, then let us sweep all that away! If God tells us that we must give up the hundred talents, then in God's name let them go! Let them go, though no recompense should ever come, just because God bids us! Let them go, gratefully remembering that God can give us much more than this; that there never was a sacrifice made by man for God's sake and at God's bidding, but God has requited, and will requite, a hundredfold. Take no man's word for that; listen to the words of the Reedemer: "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." Let us go where God bids us, brethren, though the way be rough and steep; it is enough that it is His way. Let us trust God, and do right; and it will all be well in the end!

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XIII.

NO MORE PAIN.

"Neither shall there be any more pain."- REV. xxi. 4.

HERE is no need to explain to any human being what it is that is meant by Pain. We all know that. We know pain by the best means of knowing: we know it by having felt it. And we arrived at that sad knowledge early; none of us lived long in this world before learning by experience what is meant by pain.

There is a sense in which we may use the word, in which its meaning is wider than it is as it stands in this text. Pain may be taken to mean all suffering, whether of the body or of the mind. And when we speak of Pleasure and Pain, or of things being pleasing or painful, we sometimes understand by pleasure everything that is pleasing, joyful, happy; and by pain, everything that you would shrink from, from whatever source it may come, everything that implies suffering, sorrow, anguish. But it is not in this large sense that the word is to be understood in this text. Pain is here to be understood in its strict

meaning. For you observe that the writer of the Revelation distinguishes it from sorrow, from death, from tears; and as he tells us of the glory and the bliss of the New Jerusalem above, as he tells us of the springs of anguish that shall be absent there, he classes our sad heritage of suffering by itself. He is speaking of God's own people, when from the discipline and trials of this mortal life they shall have passed into the Golden City; and he tells us that in that life immortal "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain.”

So it is manifest that, in this promise, pain is to be distinguished from that which is properly called sorrow; and we are to understand by pain that which the world strictly means: to wit, suffering which arises from our fleshly nature. All feeling, of course, pleasing or painful, is in the soul; it is the soul alone that feels. But pain means bodily suffering. Pain means that suffering which, though felt in the soul, has its origin in the body. That is pain. And now you see that in the better world there is to be an end of it. "There shall be no more pain."

I feel, my friends, that it is almost impossible for me to present to you this blessed promise in such a fashion as may make you understand its real force. For who needs to be told, that it is only when a man is actually pressed by pain that he knows what an

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