DEAR unsaved reader, I feel constrained to make one last closing appeal to you, ere this year of grace has rolled away. Soon will its days have fled, and its hours have for ever passed. I say its days and hours will have gone forever; they can never return; but not so its deeds.
Forget not, that for this year’s acts you must give account to God. “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:1212So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:12)). “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:1010For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10)).
When this year came in, it found you in your natural state, in your sins, an unbeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ. As its days have quickly fled, what has it witnessed among other things?
If “God’s Glad Tidings” has been month by month put into your hands, or read in your hearing, this year has witnessed the manner of treatment you have accorded to the Gospel statements, earnest appeals, and narrative of the conversion of others, with which its pages have teemed. What has been the effect?
Are you still unsaved, unmoved, unconcerned as to the salvation of your soul? Alas! alas!
Yet why should it be so? Have not others been blessed through its pages? Yes, thanks be to God, many, but not you.
No doubt you have been at times interested, perhaps even concerned; a tear may have fallen, a sigh been heaved, a resolution to decide for Christ soon come to, as the Spirit of God has touched your conscience; and. then, alas, you have relapsed into your old, dead, careless state of unbelief and unconcern.
How long is this to go on? Will God always wait for you? Can you treat His Son, His salvation, His Spirit’s pleadings ever with this careless indifference? No; surely not. 1879 will soon have run its course. So will you yours. “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (James 5:88Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. (James 5:8)). Verily! He is even at the door. Everything proclaims His near advent.
Should He come now, as you read these lines, what must your fate be? “The blackness of darkness forever.” You have no light, no life, no peace, no pardon, no fitness for God’s presence. You are uncleansed, unwashed, unsaved, unforgiven, unblessed. Nay, more, you are impenitent, unconcerned, and unperturbed in your lost estate. How could you meet the Lord? Only with horror and fear. Could you rise to meet Him in the air?
Not so. It is “His own” alone He will take up, and you are not among them. You would be left to the judgment and the doom your folly and unbelief have courted. What a doom! AN ETERNAL HELL.
Be not deceived! “Eternal life” is a reality.
So is judgment. “Eternal judgment” are God’s own words, and this can only be the final doom of the soul that passes from time into eternity in its sins, and Christless.
Oh! precious soul, pass not hence so, I beseech you. “Yet there is room;” yet all may be forgiven. Do be roused to your need and danger. Do believe the plain statements of the word of God as to your state, and His remedy for that condition, through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Turn to God now—as you are, in your sins. He loves you; He will welcome you. “Christ has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,” so that the work which entitles you to draw near to God is accomplished. “Sins” cannot now be a barrier to your access to God, for Christ has “suffered” for them. Your will is the only obstacle. Is not that a dreadful thing? Your will (not your sins, for they can be blotted out) standing in the way of your salvation. If that be the only obstacle—and it is—had you not better clear it away at once? Surely.
Just go thoroughly down before God at once, own you are a ruined, lost sinner; make a clean breast of your life and sins; cast yourself simply on Jesus, and you will be saved, most surely. “Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out,” are His own words.
What a blessed thing to end the year with Christ, though you began it without Him! If you now believe simply in Jesus, how will you end it? Saved! Saved! yes, thank God, SAVED! “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” is the divine testimony to a troubled sinner. “He that believeth not shall be damned,” is the solemn witness of our Lord Christ to a careless sinner:
O let the days of thy carelessness be for ever over; and now, truly turning to the Lord, begin to live for Him. Farewell, my friend. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be· gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee PEACE.”
W. T. P. W.