TWO brothers, having found out their sinful condition, determined to seek salvation, and prepare for eternity. They had tasted the empty and bitter pleasures of sin and the world for a season, and apparently discovered its false outside covering all too soon. But alas! after a short time the youngest might be seen mingling again with his fellow-travelers on the road to judgment, refusing his brother’s constant warning, and plunging recklessly into any and every amusement. Having accepted an invite to a ball, he refused to go with his brother to the meeting for prayer when the time for both came.
It is difficult to tell the sorrowful story of that ballroom, and the solemn word of warning which came to all in that brilliant scene. The young man stood ready with his partner—yes, ready for the dance, but totally unprepared for DEATH! And then—how awful! — you might have seen him apparently in the midst of life and health suddenly fall to the polished floor, lifeless! Oh, the reality of death! The wrath of God abideth on the unbeliever (John 3:36), and he is already condemned, because “ye will not come to Me that ye might have life,” says the rejected Saviour, who died on the cross to bear your sins away.
Be warned, reader; procrastinate no longer when such eternal issues are at stake, but receive as the eldest brother did that very night the Lord Jesus as your own Friend and Saviour. His love is ever free and boundless, and when the span of life has spent itself, you will be ready for Him who bore your sins in His own body on the tree.
“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.”
You can search out these precious words for yourself in God’s Book, the Bible. Only today I heard from a preacher of the gospel of a man who had for some years lived in sin and folly and drunkenness having been turned from idols (as he called it himself) to serve Jesus. When he played on his instrument the empty dance-music usually heard did not come, but that hymn beginning―
“I feel like singing all the time,
My tears are wiped away;
For Jesus is a Friend of mine,
I’ll serve Him every day.
I’ll praise Him, praise Him, praise Him all the time.”
Will you not join in this glad song?
E.