O sceptic world, this is the final answer to your scepticism, an answer none the less true because you cannot receive it:  The Lord keepeth the souls of His saints. Have you not seen men thinning out a great tree, cutting off some of its noblest branches and marring its splendid symmetry?  And very likely you have felt it was a great shame to do so.  But that work of maiming and spoiling meant light and sunshine and air in a close and darkened room.  It meant health to the dwellers in the house over which the tree had cast its shadow.  It is much to have tall and stately trees in the garden of life.  But by-and-by that great oak of vigour begins to darken the windows of faith, and God lops some of the branches.  We call it suffering, but it means more light.  Or it may be that those firs of lordly ambition have grown taller than the roof-tree, and God sends forth His storm-wind to lay them low.  We call it failure, but it means a better view of the stars.  Ah, yes, we are over-anxious about the trees in the garden.  God cares most of all that the light of His truth and the warmth of His love and the breath of His Spirit shall reach and fill every room in the house of life.

He shall keep thy soul. That is a promise that can fold us in divine comfort and peace, and that can do something towards interpreting for us every coil of difficulty, every hour of pain.  But if this is to be so, we must ourselves be true to the view of life the promise gives us.  We must think of the soul as God thinks of it.  We live in a world where souls are cheap.  They are bought and sold day by day.  It is strange beyond all understanding that the only thing many a man is not afraid of losing is the one thing that is really worth anything to him—­his soul.  Sometimes the lusts of the world drag down our heart’s desire, and we have to confess with shame to moments in our experience when we have not been at all concerned with what became of our soul so long as the desire of the hour was fulfilled or satisfied.  We need to seek day by day that the masterful and abiding desires of our heart may be set upon undying good, and that our aspiration may never fold its wings and rest on anything lower than the highest.  This shall not make dreamers of us.  It shall stand us in good stead in the thick of the world.  The man who gets ‘the best of the bargain’ is always the man who is most honest; for the most precious thing that a man stands to win or lose in any deal is the cleanness of his soul.  The man who gets the best of the argument is always the man who is most truthful; for a quiet conscience is better than a silenced opponent.  The man who gets the best of life is the man who keeps the honour of his soul; for Jesus said:  ’What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’