ONE of our ocean steamships was crossing the Atlantic in a gale, which increased in violence to the danger of the ship. At the height of the storm, some twenty passengers were assembled in the saloon, engaged in a fashionable game of cards; shouts of laughter and merry jokes accompanied it, while our deck officers and men were straining every nerve to ensure the safety of those who were trifling away the hours which might have proved their last. As the wind slightly changed, or the ship her course, the waves began to break broadside on with the noise of heavy guns. “Come in,” answered the cardplayers, adding, “which of us is Jonah?”
“Come in!” Ah! thought some who sat apart feeling the peril, had the sea really come in, what would your fate, gay speakers, have been! It was the laughter of fools, like the crackling of thorns under a pot, and “God was not in all their thoughts.”
In Noah’s day, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not, until the flood came and took them all away (Matt. 24).
The night before Sodom, with all its inhabitants, was overthrown, the men of the city were amusing themselves in sin (Gen. 19).
Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine together, when a great wind smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon them and killed them (Job 1).
Belshazzar and his lords were carousing in Babylon, when in the same hour God’s hand wrote their doom, which was executed that night (Dan. 5).
The judgment of great Babylon of the future will come in one hour, when nations are drinking her wine and kings of the earth are living deliciously, and merchants waxing rich through her (Rev. 18).
Worldling! be warned in time. What is the harm! do you say? and better to be merry than to mope! do you reply? Could Damocles be merry when he saw the sword suspended over him? If you knew that death had to be encountered in one hour, would you play cards? If you were forced to pass through a cholera-stricken town, would you make light of it? Test yourself thus: if you believed that judgment were coming on this world today, would you join in its laughter? Nay, you would rather enter into your chamber, shut your door, and seek mercy where alone it can be found. What is the cry that often involuntarily escapes the lips of men in moments of sudden peril? “God have mercy on me,” many a one has been heard to exclaim, showing that man has a conscience and knows that he cannot face God in his sins. Could you? “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him: and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:6, 76Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: 7Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6‑7))
H. L. H.