Mark 8:35 For whoever will save his life shall lose it; but whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. Who has not heard, or rather read, of that famous Asiatic warrior, Saladin? After subjugating Egypt, establishing himself as Sultan of Egypt and Syria, taking towns without number, and retaking Jerusalem itself from the hands of the crusaders, this Moslem hero of the Third Crusade, and beau ideal of mediaeval chivalry, had at length to yield to a still mightier conqueror. A few moments before he breathed his last he ordered a herald to suspend on the point of a lance the shroud in which he was to be buried, and to cry as he raised it, "Look, here is all that Saladin the Great, the conqueror, the emperor, bears away with him of all his glory." Thus all the honours and riches of this world, all bodily pleasures and gratifications, all earthly greatness, are reduced by death to the shroud and the winding sheet; but the soul, immortal in its nature, and secure in its existence, "smiles at the drawn dagger" or other implement of death. Who, then, can estimate the untold value of the soul? (J. J. Given, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. |
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