LIVE FOR A PURPOSE

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 24, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 12.

LIVE FOR A PURPOSE.

LIVE for some purpose in the world. Act your part well. Fill up the measure of your duty to others. Conduct yourself so that you will be missed with sorrow when you are gone. Multitudes of our species are living in such a selfish manner that they are not likely to be remembered after their disappearance. They leave behind them scarcely any trace of their existence, but are forgotten almost as though they had never been. While they live, they are like one pebble lying unobserved amongst a million on the shore, and when they die, they are like that same pebble thrown into the sea, which just ruffles the surface, sinks, and is forgotten, without being missed from the beach. They are neither regretted by the rich, wanted by the poor, nor celebrated by the learned. Who has been the better for their life? Who has been the worse for their death? Whose tears have they dried up? Whose wants supplied? Whose miseries have

they healed? Who would unbar the gates of life to re-admit them to existence? or what face would greet them back again to our world with a smile? Wretched, unproductive mode of existence! Selfishness is its own curse; it is a starving vice. The man who does no good, gets none. He is like the heath in the desert, neither yielding fruit, nor seeing when good cometh; a stunted, dwarfish, miserable shrub.—Selected.