I remember poor Kevin. He was a young boy who on one Sunday morning, instead of going to Sunday school, went with a companion to the rocky cliffs along the seashore, for the purpose of robbing a hawk’s nest. Vincent, his companion, was a full-grown man, with no respect for the Lord’s day. He was more mature in sin than Kevin, whose prickings of conscience he may have overcome.
The place in which the hawks had built their nest could only be approached from above; and the surrounding rock was rotten, as if the birds, by instinct, had chosen a spot which no prudent creature without wings would attempt to reach. Young Kevin, however, was sent to the point of danger, by the elder man as he looked on.
Kevin returned again and again, terror-struck, after nearing the nest. At last he swore that he would have it at his next try, so he went forward again. Just when about to grasp the young birds, the piece of rock to which he clung gave way and down with it Kevin plunged. Oh, the despair which looked through that upturned face of his as he felt the rock giving way, and the burning thoughts which like lightning must have flashed through his guilty soul for we are told that often memory in such circumstances gathers with individual distinctness, the whole events of a whole lifetime into a single moment! And sometimes it seems as if evil spirits have hovered, like vultures, around a doomed sinner as he plunged into eternity. True, these are dreadful words; but death in sin is an awful thing, of which we cannot think too solemnly.
Vincent, who described afterward the whole occurrence, descended by a safe path to the shore, and there found his young companion, his lifeless body lying on the rocks below. “I tied my handkerchief about his crushed head,” said he; “that was all I could do.” Yes, that was all he could do, for the dead, mangled body. But what about his soul?
How much better had it been for poor Kevin had he heeded the voice of his conscience and gone to Sunday school and there sat under the Word of God, and listened to the name of Jesus being upheld as the only Saviour of sinners. What infinite gain for his young soul to have received Christ as his Saviour, and lived to sing His praise through time and eternity! But what loss—eternal loss—for him if he were unsaved and he suddenly ushered into eternity without Christ.
O dear friends, young and old alike, take Christ as your Saviour now, while you have opportunity to be saved. Tomorrow, YOU may be in eternity, and it will be forever too late. Confess Jesus as your Saviour and Lord today; tomorrow you may be where Kevin is now. If you have Christ as your Saviour in this life, if suddenly taken out of this world, you will be with Him in perfect bliss forever.
ML 08/17/1967