Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/208

204 me were I to gain the whole world and finally lose my soul? Were all its wealth and honor and glory mine, I could keep them only a few days. But if I lose my soul, it is not lost for a limited time, but lost forever. Seeing that his immortal spirit outweighs the world with all its magnificence and all its glory, he wisely "counts all things but dung and loss, that he might win Christ, and be found of him in peace." But how little of this heavenly wisdom is to be found in the world? If we contemplate man as an inhabitant of this earth, without reference to eternity, and consider his great and wonderful achievements in the arts and sciences, we are forced to acknowledge his eminent wisdom. But when we regard him as a candidate for eternity, what a falling off is here. How blind, how grossly ignorant is he in his spiritual and eternal concerns! And it is not because of the impossibility of his displaying the same wisdom in this