Job 13:27

Thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet.

Footprints

True religion there cannot be without an abiding sense of our responsibilities. We must discover and realise our moral obligations, or we can never meet and discharge them. What is meant by moral responsibility? It implies that God will call man to account for his whole character and conduct, and will render to every man accordingly. To every man time is a state of probation, and eternity a state of retribution. The doctrine of our responsibility lies within us, graven on our very being by the Spirit of God Himself. We are apt to forget the extent of this responsibility. We look upon it as a mere generality. Note, then, we are responsible for our thoughts and our actions. The responsibility extends to every word of our lips, and to every stepping of our feet. As we walk, we write the history of our movements--write them down forever. Some footprints can outlive ages, as the geologists show us. God will remind you that He put a print into the heel of your foot, that He might bring you into judgment for your movements upon earth. Here is a thought upon a part of our responsibilities we are apt to forget. We cannot move but we carry with us our Christian obligations, and our consequent relationship to the day of judgment necessarily attending those obligations. Every single step has left behind it an eternal footprint which determines in what direction we walk, in what character we move.

1. Wherever we move we carry with us our personal and individual responsibility. In every change of place and contact with man on the travel we act as beings who must give an account to God. Then call to mind the obligations that rest on you.

2. We are all so constituted as to exert a relative influence on each other. There is no member of the human family who does not sustain some relation, either original or acquired, either public or private, either permanent or temporary; nor is there any relation which does not invest the person sustaining it with some degree of interest. Do we think as we ought of this? (J. C. Phipps Eyre, M. A.)