Some young men had gathered for the evening. Singing songs and telling jokes filled up part of the time, and at last they began asking each other hard questions. A roar of laughter was raised all around when one of the company said, "I will give you a question which one of our clerks thought he would stump me with the other evening on the way home from the office. He asked, 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
When the laughter had subsided, a voice from the other end of the room was heard asking anxiously, "And how did you answer it?"
It was a Christian maid in the house who, passing in and out of the room in her service, was so shocked at the laughter about so solemn a subject that she could not help speaking aloud the thoughts that were passing through her mind.
The second question, coming so unexpectedly, seemed to strike the company dumb for a few minutes. No one spoke. The words, "How did you answer it?" were the arrow of conviction to the heart of the young man who told the story. He tried to forget the question, but it stuck in his mind in spite of every effort to forget it.
Along the lonely streets as he walked to his home at midnight, the words rang through his soul. He tossed restlessly on his bed, but could not sleep. The great Eternity, and where he was to spend it, was the subject of his thoughts all night.
He rose and went to work the next day hoping to drive such thoughts from his mind, but all to no avail. He could find no rest, no peace, until as a guilty sinner he came to the Lord Jesus and received Him as his Savior.
Now he preaches the gospel of God's grace to others, and he seldom speaks without in one way or another introducing his favorite text, that great unanswerable question which first reached his own heart and conscience: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall 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).
I pass the maid's pointed question on to you: How do you answer it?