Page:Profit and loss, or, The Christian merchant.pdf/2



VERY merchant is acquainted with the meaning of the words Profit and Loss. They are the title of an account in his hooks which exhibits the state of his business, and from which, at one view, he may ascertain whether he is prospering or not. When I was a boy at school, I was much puzzled to understand how two such opposite things as profit and loss should be put into the same account; and the Teacher explained the matter by telling me, that the loss went all to one side, and the gain to the other.

There is a book of far more importance than a merchant's Ledger, in which the same words are used in reference to an account that every man should take of himself, in order to ascertain whether his affairs be in a prosperous or a ruinous condition. The words are, Mat. xvi. 26. “What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Here is a question of profit and loss plainly stated It is addressed to every man, and to all descriptions of men without distinction, as all are equally interested in it. There is the gain of the world, and the loss of the soul, on one side; and the gain of the soul, with, perhaps, the loss of the world, on the other. There seems, at first view, to be both a profit and a loss on each of the sides; but when the account is examined, and wound up, it will be found that all is loss on the one side, and that all