DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS: I suppose you have all stood on the scales and been weighed. I have here a pair of balances. This was doubtless one of the earliest kind of instruments with which people weighed different things, and it is the kind of scales which are still used when the greatest accuracy is desired. These are called a balance, because when I hold them by this string you will see that this end of the arm and that end of the arm are equal in length and equal in weight and they exactly balance each other. Now when I place anything in the pan on this end of the arm, and place a small weight in the pan on the opposite arm, and then lift the balance up, you will see how I can readily tell how much the piece of metal, or piece of wood, or whatever I have placed in the balances, weighs. In the drug stores they use this kind of scales to weigh medicines, and they can tell accurately the weight of a very small quantity. In the laboratory, or the place where medicines are made, they have this kind of scales that will weigh the smallest particle of dust; even a small piece of a hair laid on the scales can be weighed accurately.
Balances.
In the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel we read about a king whose name was Belshazzar, who lived in the great city of Babylon, surrounded by a great wall three hundred feet high and eighty feet broad, and with a hundred gates of brass, twenty-five gates on each side of the city, and a street running from each of the gates upon the one side, straight across the city to each of the corresponding gates upon the opposite side, a distance of some twelve or fifteen miles; and then other streets crossing these first twenty-five streets, running between the gates which were upon the other two sides of the city. God had blessed this king of Babylon and given him great wealth and great power; but he became proud and defied God. One night he made a great feast and invited a thousand of his lords and the generals of his army, and sent for the golden vessels of the Temple, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought down from Jerusalem, and Belshazzar drank wine out of these sacred vessels of the Temple. And, like men and women when they drink liquor, they lost their reason, and they praised the gods of gold, and of silver, and brass, and iron, and wood, and of stone, and thus dishonored God; and there appeared in the banqueting hall the fingers of a man's hand and wrote on the wall so that all might see and read it, and these were the words which were written before that wicked king: "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." (Daniel v: 27.)
Now you see that God weighs men and women, not for the purpose of telling how many pounds their bodies weigh, but He weighs their character, He weighs their conduct, He weighs their purposes, and He weighs their principles, and so He weighed Belshazzar, and He said of him and to him, "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." God weighed Belshazzar as though he were placed in this side of the balance, and on the other side of the balance were placed all his opportunities, privileges and his blessings, and all that God had done for him. When God thus weighed him against all these things Belshazzar was found so light that he did not weigh as much as the privileges and blessings which God had given him, and therefore, God said that he was weighed in the balances and was found wanting.
In just this same way God weighs you and me, in order that we may see whether or not we weigh enough. Suppose we turn to the twentieth chapter of Exodus and there find what God requires of us. You will find that God says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."
"Thou Art Weighed in the Balances, and Art Found Wanting."
Now suppose I place this requirement in one side of the balance, and then ask you to place your obedience to this requirement in the other side of the balance. I am sure there are a great many grown men and women who could not be weighed against this requirement. If a man loves money, so that he sacrifices his obedience to God, or sacrifices his character, or gives too large an amount of time to money-making, and money-getting; if his love of money is very great, you see how he makes money a sort of a god—that is, that he exalts his love of money above his love of God. In the same way a person can worship pleasure, and ease, and fame in such a way as to exalt these above God. Now any one who has done this, cannot be weighed against this requirement of God's law without being found wanting.
If we take the next Commandment, it reads, "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Now anybody who has ever sworn cannot be weighed against this Commandment. A man who curses and swears is a very wicked man. I hope that none of you, boys or girls, will ever profane God's name and disgrace yourself by swearing.