A few years ago the passengers on an express railway train, were startled by the prolonged whistle of the locomotive as they descended a sharp grade. The noise continued for some time, and then the engine was brought to a sudden standstill. There was a general rush to the windows to find out what was the cause of the stoppage. To the astonishment of all, they learned that a little boy had been found fast asleep in a wheelbarrow in the center of the railway track.
Had the engineer not noticed him just in time to reverse the brakes and stop the train, the little fellow would in all likelihood have been killed in a moment, and his lifeless body been mangled and bruised. At first the boy was not at all well pleased at being so rudely awakened out of his sleep, but when he understood how narrowly he had escaped from a terrible death he felt deeply grateful to his deliverer.
Unconverted people, like the little boy, are exposed to dreadful danger. A far more terrible “death” stares them in the face, but they close their eyes to the fact and persuade themselves that it is distant; or, at any rate, they “hope” that they will escape it.
Friends raise the “danger signal,” urge them to flee for their lives; but still they tarry. Some, when faithfully and tenderly spoken to of their peril, become annoyed and irritated. They assert that they attend to their “own business,” and tell those who have taken the trouble to speak to them that they are “a great deal better than some who profess,” and that they have “as good a chance” of getting to heaven as they.
What would you think of a mother suspending her child over a precipice by a single thread? You would think that she was insane. Yet you are doing a far worse thing than that. By the “brittle thread of life” you are hanging over the abyss of woe. At any moment you may be cut down, and awaken in an undone eternity, to weep and wail and gnash your teeth at your own folly throughout the eternal ages.
Accept Him as your Saviour and Friend by believing the glorious Gospel of the grace of God (John 3:11There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: (John 3:1)(3, 33; Isaiah 53: 5,6).
ML 10/18/1931