By:
Edited by W. T. P. Wolston.
A YOUNG man, distinguished for his mathematical attainments, was fond of challenging his fellow-students to a trial of skill in solving difficult problems. One day a classmate came into his study, and laying a folded paper before him said, “There is a problem I wish you would help me to solve,” and immediately left the room. The paper was eagerly unfolded, and there, instead of a question in mathematics, were traced the lines, “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
With a gesture of impatience he tore the paper to atoms, and turned again to his books. But in vain he tried to shake off the impressions of the solemn words he had read. The Holy Spirit pressed home his convictions of guilt and danger, so that he could find no peace, till he found it in believing in Jesus. He subsequently became a preacher of the Gospel he had once despised, and his first address was from the words, so eminently blessed to his soul, “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:3636For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36)).