them; and then return to the tree, and see which had made the
straightest track.

The signal was given. They started. They reached the fence, and
returned to the tree. "Now, boys, who has made the straightest
track?" said one of the boys, named James Allison.

"Henry Armstrong's is the only one that is straight at all," said
Thomas Sanders.

"I don't see how we all contrived to go so crooked, when the meadow
is so smooth, and there is nothing to turn us out of the way," said
one of the boys.

And then, looking to their successful companion, they said--"Tell us,
Harry, how you managed to make so straight a track?"

Now mark what Harry said:--"I fixed my eye on yonder tall pine tree
on the other side of the fence towards which I was to walk, and never
looked away from it till I reached the fence."

The other boys were walking without any particular aim in view. No
wonder that their walk was crooked. After the apostle Paul became a
Christian, he made one of the straightest tracks through this world
to heaven that ever was made. And he made it in just the same way in
which Harry Armstrong made his straight track through that meadow. We
have seen what Harry said of his track through the snow; now see what
St. Paul says of the way in which he made his straight track through
this world to heaven. _This_ is what he says:

"One thing I do; forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the
mark, for the prize of the high calling of God, in Christ Jesus,"
Phil, iii 13,14. This was just what the racer used to do in the
ancient games, when he fixed his eye on the prize and pressed right
forward till he reached it. And it was just what Harry Armstrong did
in his play. He fixed his eye on the big pine tree and never turned
to the right hand or to the left till he reached it. The apostle Paul
fixed his eye on Jesus, and made a straight track through the world
till he reached the glorious heaven where Jesus dwells. And, in doing
this, the great apostle was only practising the lesson of duty taught
by the voice that speaks from the Transfiguration scene. "_Hear
him_," said that voice. And if you and I listen to it, and obey it,
as St. Paul did, it will lead us to follow him as he followed Christ;
and then we shall make a straight path through this world to heaven,
as he did in his Christian course. There is success in doing this.

And then there is--_profit_--i