How could you do so?  Did you think that your soul was a mere trinket which for a few pennies you could buy in a toy shop?  Did you think that your soul, if once lost, might be found again if you went out with torches and lanterns?  Did you think that your soul was short-lived, and that, panting, it would soon lie down for extinction?  Or had you no idea what your soul was worth?  Did you ever put your forefingers on its eternal pulses?  Have you never felt the quiver of its peerless wing?  Have you not known that, after leaving the body, the first step of your soul reaches to the stars, and the next step to the furthest outposts of God’s universe, and that it will not die until the day when the everlasting Jehovah expires?  Oh, my brother, what possessed you that you should part with your soul so cheap?  “Ye have sold yourselves for nought.”

But I have some good news to tell you.  I want to engage in a litigation for the recovery of that soul of yours.  I want to show that you have been cheated out of it.  I want to prove, as I will, that you were crazy on that subject, and that the world, under such circumstances, has no right to take the title-deed from you; and if you will join me I shall get a decree from the High Chancery Court of Heaven reinstating you into the possession of your soul.  “Oh,” you say, “I am afraid of lawsuits; they are so expensive, and I can not pay the cost.”  Then have you forgotten the last half of my text?  “Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money.”

Money is good for a great many things, but it can not do anything in this matter of the soul.  You can not buy your way through.  Dollars and pounds sterling mean nothing at the gate of mercy.  If you could buy your salvation, heaven would be a great speculation, an extension of Wall Street.  Bad men would go up and buy out the place, and leave us to shift for ourselves.  But as money is not a lawful tender, what is?  I will answer:  Blood!  Whose?  Are we to go through the slaughter?  Oh, no; it wants richer blood than ours.  It wants a king’s blood.  It must be poured from royal arteries.  It must be a sinless torrent.  But where is the king?  I see a great many thrones and a great many occupants, yet none seem to be coming down to the rescue.  But after awhile the clock of night in Bethlehem strikes twelve, and the silver pendulum of a star swings across the sky, and I see the King of Heaven rising up, and He descends, and steps down from star to star, and from cloud to cloud, lower and lower, until He touches the sheep-covered hills, and then on to another hill, this last skull-covered, and there, at the sharp stroke of persecution, a rill incarnadine trickles down, and we who could not be redeemed by money are redeemed by precious and imperial blood.