How does this New Year find you, dear reader? For Christ, or against Him? Which? O, which? I earnestly ask you. What think you of Christ? Do not cast the question away from you, but put it to your own heart, and answer it truthfully. You are either saved or unsaved—serving Christ, or Satan; in the narrow road leading to glory, or treading the downward path to hell. You will spend eternity either with Christ, or solemn thought in eternal banishment from Him. Again I ask you, Which is it? which will it be, for eternity heaven or hell? Blessed it is for you if you can say,
“Now I can call the Savior mine,
Though all unworthy still;
I’m shelter’d by His precious blood
Beyond the reach of ill.”
Beloved, if this be the language of your heart, it is well with you; and I would just say, Be true to the One who loved you, and gave Himself for you, and who is coming to receive us to Himself!
But O! if my reader be still a stranger to that blessed Lord Jesus Christ, I would say, How awful is your position! unsaved, without the question of your soul’s eternal salvation settled; judgment staring you in the face? Does this startle you? or do you think the case exaggerated? Nay, it is not; and no matter how you look at or regard it, you cannot change God’s Word. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but” —awful thought— “the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)).
O, beloved, unsaved one, in the face of all this, can you deliberately turn your back on Christ? “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (Heb. 2:33How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; (Hebrews 2:3)). We cannot; and surely you cannot be so mad as to begin another year as a rejector of Christ, duped by the devil?
Christ has completed the work of salvation more than eighteen hundred years ago, and you have only to believe it, to accept Him, and life, eternal life, is yours. Is it not simple? God offers this free salvation to you now. Will you take it?
And now one parting word. God in boundless grace offers to “Whosoever will the water of life freely;” but remember, it is now He offers it. “Now is the day of salvation;” beware how you neglect it.
“All things are ready; come,
Tomorrow may not be;
O sinner, come, the Savior waits
This hour to welcome thee.”