One throw of the dice and the great game of life is lost!

(John MacDuff, "Thoughts for the Quiet Hour", 1895)

How many there are with whom the labor of long years is a failure! They are engaged building some favorite edifice, material or mental, literally or figuratively. They dream not that it rests on shifting sands, or on the edge of a muffled volcano!

A teacher bestows his fondest assiduous care on a pupil — a young life full of high intellectual promise. A sudden illness comes and sweeps him away!

A parent lavishes his tenderest love and affections, thought and time and money, in raising his child; but, by-and-by, the life of his prodigal son, is to the parent, worse than death.

Yes, often are fondest hopes, best laid plans, glad aspirations, thwarted; the glowing visions of success clouded with misfortune — calamity — ruin — the grave! One throw of the dice and the great game of life is lost!

Not so with imperishable riches — "the hope laid up for you in Heaven" — bliss beyond the accidents of capricious fortune, bonds that can know no dissolution. "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever!" Psalm 73:26