for the answer would be
ready in a moment, "Much, every way"; but, what difference is it making
_in_ you? Does it never occur to you that you ought to be a different
man--a better man--that you ought to be a different woman--a better
woman--for the sake of the little one lying in the cradle? Do you know
that of all the things God ever made and owns, in this or all His
worlds, there is nothing more dear to Him than the soul of the little
child He has committed to your hands? What hands those should be that
bear a gift like that! Perhaps we never thought of it in that way
before. But it is true, whether we think of it or not. Is it not time to
begin to think of it? This night, as we stand over our sleeping child,
let us promise to God, for the child's sake, that we will be His.

(4) Last of all, we must learn to set Christ's value upon ourselves.
This is the tragedy of life, that we hold ourselves so cheap. We are
sprung of heaven's first blood, have titles manifold, and yet, when the
crown is offered us, we choose rather, like the man with the muck-rake,
in Bunyan's great allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and straws
of the floor. In the times of the French Revolution, French soldiers, it
is said, stabled their horses in some of the magnificent cathedrals of
France; but some of us are guilty of a far worse sacrilege in that holy
of holies which we call the soul. "Ye were redeemed, not with
corruptible things, with silver or gold," but with blood, precious
blood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we are
ready to sell any day in the open market for a little more pleasure or a
little more pelf. The birthright is bartered for the sorriest mess of
pottage, and the jewel which the King covets to wear in His crown our
own feet trample in the mire of the streets. The pity of it, the pity of
it!

In one of Dora Greenwell's simple and beautiful _Songs of Salvation_, a
pitman tells to his wife the story of his conversion. He had got a word
like a fire in his heart that would not let him be, "Jesus, the Son of
God, who loved, and who gave Himself for me."

"It was for me that Jesus died! for me, and a world of men,
Just as sinful, and just as slow to give back His love again;
And He didn't wait till I came to Him, but He loved me at my worst;
He needn't ever have died for me if I could have loved Him first."

And then he continues:--

"And could'st Thou love such a man as me, m