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Profit
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” (Mark 8:36)?
The great commercial question of the day is, What is the profit? Have you seen the balance-sheet? When everything has been satisfactorily totaled up, what will this or that transaction yield? When a final settlement has been made, when prime costs and “general expenses” have been accurately gauged, and when all these have been put over against my gross gains, what margin will then be left for my own benefit? By how much shall I actually have been the gainer? What profit?
Life’s big transaction, with its various details, will have to be reckoned up some day for everyone. Actual gains will have to be accurately calculated, total losses computed, and the balance struck for final settlement. Then the all-engrossing question will once more be asked, “What profit?” When we reach the end of all things here, what heart-sinking calculations will have to be made! When some of the wealthiest have viewed their gains in view of their eternal losses, what blank dismay, what fearfulness, what shrinking back, when they hear, “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting” (Daniel 5:27).
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