The father leaned his head on his hand, and was silent. He owned broad acres of land that were covered with a bountiful produce; his barns were even now filled with plenty, his buildings were all well covered by insurance; and as if that would not suffice for the maintenance of his wife and only child in case of his decease, he had, the day before, taken a life-policy for a large amount; yet not one thought had he given to his own immortal soul. On that which was to waste away and become part and parcel of its native dust he had spared no pains; but for that which was to live on and on through the long ages of eternity he had made no provision. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Memory I have been twice at the point of death. I was drowning once, and just as I was going down the third time I was rescued. In the twinkling of an eye my whole life came flashing across my mind. I cannot tell you how it was. I cannot tell you how a whole life can be crowded into a second of time; but everything I had done from my earliest childhood--it all came flashing across my mind. And I believe that when God touches the secret spring of memory, every one of our sins will come back, and if they have not been blotted out by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, they will haunt us as eternal ages roll on. We talk about our forgetting, but we cannot forget if God says "Remember." We talk about the recording angel keeping the record of our life. I have an idea that when we get to heaven, or into eternity, we will find that recording angel has been ourselves. God will make every one of us keep our own record; these memories will keep the record, and when God shall say, "Son, remember," it will all flash across our mind. It won't be God who will condemn us; it will be ourselves. We shall condemn ourselves, and we shall stand before God speechless. There is a man in prison. He has been there five years. Ask that man what makes the prison so terrible to him. Ask him if it is the walls and the iron gates--ask him if it is his hard work, and he will tell you _no_; he will tell you what makes the prison so terrible to him is _memory_; and I have an idea that if we got down into the lost world, we would find that is what makes hell so terrible--the remembrance that they once heard the Gospel, that they once had Christ offered to them, that they once had the privilege of being saved, but they made light of the Gospel, they neglected salvation, they rejected the offer of mercy, and now if they would accept it they could not. Balaam's Ass A friend of mine was going back to Scotland, and he heard a couple of these little modern philosophers discussing the Bible. One said: "The Bible says that Balaam's ass spoke. Now, I am a scientific man, and I have taken the pains to examine an ass's mouth, and it is so formed that it couldn't speak." He was going to toss the whole Bible over because Balaam's ass couldn't speak.