"For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? For what should a man give in exchange for his life?" Formerly it read "soul" instead of "life;" and in the end it comes to the same: the man who loses his life finally loses his soul. Yet it is the life of which the Savior is here speaking. It is a question of the present as well as of the future. As a [186] man gains the world, he loses his life. In proportion as he obtains the world, whatever it has to offer, he ceases to live. His finest nature is smothered. His better self retreats. His feelings and tastes are degraded. His noblest thoughts and impulses are lost, and he feels, in the first stages at least, the dull vacancy left by the departure of those priceless things. Joy goes, and the world's gayety is a poor substitute for it. Peace leaves, and the forced indifference and hardness of heart can not quite take its place. Over all the dearly bought acquisitions of honor, pleasure, riches, "Ichabod" is written; for the glory is departed and the world is now a dreary treadmill. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." So does many a man also go about with eyes and heart out of which the light has died, himself dead on foot; for he has gained the world and lost his life. And what is the world, even if he had it all, worth to him after that? Vain pursuit in which both those who lose and those who succeed are failures!

[TAG 186-187]