Thirteen young men sat down to supper one evening, and their feasting and merriment went to such lengths that even death became a subject of joke.
“One of us will die tonight, we are thirteen:” and pointing to the youngest in their midst, a youth of eighteen, they said,
“It will be you.”
The party broke up, and three of them, including the youth, who were waiters in a hotel, turned their steps towards the lake, and got into a boat which was intended to carry only one person. It was near midnight, and no one was at hand to warn them of the risk they were running.
Did they remember their joke? We cannot tell. When morning dawned they were missing from their posts; and the boat, bottom upwards, told its own tale, with one body which was washed ashore. Those of the two others were recovered later in the day—but where were their souls?
“There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of the unjust;” and that is what makes death such a solemn thing, and not one to be spoken of carelessly. Would it not have solemnized you, had you been staying in that hotel, to awake in the morning and find that three of its inmates had passed into eternity?
Perhaps you say, “We are tired of being told of sudden deaths”: but remember that your time may come to be called into the presence of “God the Judge of all.” The Apostle Paul says,
A young man who was an unbeliever, once said to me,
“If I believed what you believe, I would speak to every one I came in contact with, and even walk up and down the streets with a placard on my back to warn people of their danger.”
But, dear reader, it is a blessed thing to be sheltered, come what may, in the arms of Christ—those arms that were outstretched on the cross for us, when He died, “the just for the unjust.”
“In the refuge God provided—
Though the world’s destruction lowers—
We are safe—to Christ confided,
Everlasting life is ours.”