STRIKING A BALANCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 643, 20 April 1929, Page 8

STRIKING A BALANCE

THE QUIET CORNER.

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Cliandle » Assistant City Missioner.) JAT all business houses there is periodical striking of balances. The doing of this often entails a great deal of extra work. I have myself known a pound out in the cash book to hold a man back at the Qffice for a week, and a penny out in the ledger to hold him for twice as long. Ticks and cross-ticks against every item. Cash book into ledger ledger into cash book. “ The Song of the Shirt ” with its Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, is not half so dirgeful as the monotonous voice of the office boy calling back to the accountant, as he endeavours to strike a balance. In the realm of life itself , this same double-entry bookkeeping is going on (call it Cause .and Effect, or what we will) with the mechanical exactness of an adding machine. Sooner or later a balance has to be struck. A man may hold the deeds for an acre of city property, and yet be a spiritual bankrupt, and being such have about as much chance of temporal and eternal felicity, as a camel has of going through a needle’s eye. Emerson says: “ If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner.” I once met a man who rejoiced that he was in debt. It was an evidence that his credit was good. The bank was behind him. Everybody’s credit has been made good with God. We start off in life up to our pink ears in debt. In debt for the sun and the stars, for the moon in the trees, for the dew on the rose, for the frankincense of kindness, and for the gold and myrrh of love. Service is the com with which this debt is paid, and although we may end up on the wrong side of the ledger, a balance will have to be struck. Our accounts will have to be audited. At the foot of our balance sheets may the Great Auditor append these words—- “ AUDITED AND FOUND CORRECT. . . . Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these Hy brethren, ye have done it unto Me." NEXT WEEK: PLAYING SAFE.