A WAKENED IN TIME, OR ETERNITY: WHICH?Momentous question, which? Yes, my honest reader, one or other it must be.
A friend of mine was awakened out of his sleep at midnight not long since, and told that the shop underneath his dwelling-house was in flames. It was a rude awakening. The shock was terrible at the moment. Out of the home his wife and children had all to flee for dear life.
But what of that in comparison to the soul’s awakening from its death-sleep in sin to find itself beyond the reach of hope in blank, dark despair?
Mr. Cheyne once said to his congregation in preaching, “If you are not awakened in time, you will be awakened in everlasting torment to your eternal confusion.” Which will you choose? Face the question in earnest, for face it one day you must. If not made anxious now about your precious soul’s salvation the dread alternative will be yours.
I was once staying with a relative who was seized suddenly with a painful illness. He asked me to go for the doctor in all haste. I shall never forget what he said to me as he looked pitifully into my face, “What must the pains of hell be when my sufferings are so awful?”
He was a strong man―strong in body and strong in mind―but all his strength gave way in the presence of what he thought was going to be his death. Conscience began to work. He knew that he was unprepared to meet God. Hence he became most miserable in a moment.
One of the greatest blessings man can have in his present sinful state is a conscience especially an exercised one. Nothing speaks so loudly, and nothing can make a man so miserable. If conscience is not awakened in time, it will lash its victim forever. Yes, we repeat it, forever.
No pain so dreadful as the torments of remorse. Remorse is that which comes from the remembrance of guilt. Guilt is the result of sins committed.
Memory brings back the horrible past, and conscience says silently, “You did it, and you must meet God about it.”
Even the bold Deist, Theodore Parker, of Boston, declared that, “From my own experience I know the remorse which comes from conscious violation of my own integrity, from treason to myself and my God. It transcends all bodily pain, all grief at disappointed schemes, all anguish, which comes from sickness, age, from the death of dear ones prematurely taken away. To these afflictions I bow with a ‘Thy will be done.’ But remorse, the pain of sin, that will work.”
The torments of a guilty conscience have often led to suicide. It was so with Judas. It was only last night that I met a man of highly respectable parentage and of good education. He came into a gospel meeting, where I was, to get relief from his misery. After the meeting was over he unbosomed himself to me. He had all the distinguishing features of good breeding in his face. He told me how he had fallen. As he recalled the early days of his boyhood, with the stinging yet sweet memory of a godly mother, he was tempted to take his life away, thinking that would end his misery.
But how vain it is to thus seek relief. That would only be to plunge the soul into deeper misery, even the misery of hell itself, of which that same conscience, quickened into an activity that shall never cease, will help to form a part. Hear the Saviour’s words, “Where their worm dieth not (conscience), and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:4848Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9:48)).
If you, dear reader, are suffering from the memory of your own sins and youthful folly, and feel miserable because of it, do not allow Satan to befool you at this critical juncture of your history. There is hope for even you. His skill is marvelous in blinding people. Some he deludes into the folly of thinking they are not sinners, and others into believing they are too great sinners. Such often think that they have sinned away their day of grace, and that there is no hope for them.
He is always seeking to blind men and blacken God. It is the way he keeps men going on in sin, while he instils hard thoughts in their hearts against the God who was so full of love as to give His own Son to die for them. “Christ died for the ungodly.” No man can be worse than that. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
Are you tempted, dear reader, to think that there is no forgiveness for you? Has your guilt been so aggravated and your conscience so troubled that you have thought of ending your life? Some have been known to go so far, but they turned to God and obtained mercy. So may you.
George Whitfield once surprised an audience of aristocrats in Lady Huntington’s drawing-room by telling them that the blessed Lord Jesus Christ was so willing to save even the most abandoned of sinners that He would receive the devil’s outcasts. He preached from the words, “Him that cometh unto me I WILL IN NO WISE CAST OUT.” Blessed, encouraging words! None are too far sunken in sin! None need despair! All may come and find the heartiest welcome!
Proofs are not wanting that many a young man has fallen a prey to infidelity through the torments of a guilty conscience. Leaving his home in the country where there was a praying father and a godly mother, or a saintly sister or brother, whose influence he felt while there, he was forced to seek employment in the large city where all was new and perhaps very glamouring to him at first.
To all appearance he gets into agreeable and pleasant society. He shrinks from what is foul at first, but he is decoyed on step by step until he is entrapped and enchained with sin—sins of theft, sins of impurity, sins of drunkenness and fast living.
He may someday be brought to think and consider the past. He has wasted his life. He has fallen. His moral purity is perhaps lost forever. He looked on the wine when it was red and gave its color in the cup. It was very nice to be entertained, and in turn to be able to entertain others. But little did he think that that which was so very pleasing was most deceiving, and had her guests in the depths of hell, and that at last it would bite him like an adder, and sting him like a serpent.
Young man, beware! Put on the brake in time ere it be too late. The end will be awful. “BE SURE YOUR SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT.” If it finds you out in time and you drag it into God’s presence and honestly confess it, mercy will be shown you. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whosoever confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”
With moral character gone, and all restraint to stand against temptation gone (because the habit to sin has made sinning easy), and no power to stand against the evil that has eaten his very vitals, you are asked perhaps to go and hear some infidel lecturer or read some infidel book through which the devil easily infuses dreadful poison into your moral veins.
Doctors tell us that a healthy condition call resist almost any disease, but when a man’s condition is low, he invariably takes anything that is going. If this is so physically, it is also true morally.
Infidelity seems plausible. In such a low frame of mind it suits such an one to believe that there is no God, or that the Bible is not a revelation from God. In such a state the thought of meeting God is dreadful, therefore there cannot be any God to meet. All sense of responsibility is for the time lost. The young man is blinded, and thus he becomes a prey to the awful demon of infidelity. He is then free to sin with both hands earnestly. The devil laughs, men may pity or deride, but heaven weeps at the spectacle.
If this paper should fall into the hands of such, I appeal to your honesty in the sight of God to let conscience speak ere it be too late. Can you deny or disprove these statements? Dark, black, miserable, foul-mouthed infidelity would rob you of all that is morally good in life, and plunge you into the depths of darkness and despair at last.
Beware of it as you would a viper! In your own mind turn away from it as you would from a tiger or a reptile! Wake up to your responsibility, and say, “Begone, thou dream of hell!”
A poet has well said: ―
“Is yours the life the world calls fast,
An early grave the goal?
What shall it profit, count the cost,
To barter thus the soul?
The fruit of sin’s forbidden tree
Ye snatch with eager hand,
The sights, the sweets, the minstrelsy
The tempter can command.
Pause, brother, pause, that honeyed cup
Shall quickly change to gall,
And he who is the fool to sup
Finds poison in it all.
A hell to shun, a heaven to gain,
A Saviour’s love to know,
Neglect, and you have lived in vain
Though lord of all below.”
Most people want sympathy, especially the troubled and fallen. Hardness repels. Sympathy draws. Whoever showed such sympathy and compassion for the fallen and tempest-tossed as the Lord Jesus Christ? He told out the love and compassion of God for man in the very lowest stratum of human life.
Strange that men do not think of this! Strange that such love and sympathy has had so little effect! He wept over sinners. He relieved them in every possible way when He was on earth. He is the same still. What the Pharisees said in derision of Him is still true, “This man receiveth SINNERS.”
Are you a sinner? Is that the name by which you are known? Do you actually confess yourself to be a sinner? If so, He will receive you. If He died to save such, He must be very willing to receive such. Nothing could prove His willingness like giving up His sacred life as a ransom for all.
Few of us would give our life even for our nearest or dearest friends. That is the utmost that love could do. It is the true test of love. He gave His life for His enemies. Thus His love surpasses all human love.
What suffering! What anguish! What darkness and soul misery He went through on the cross to prove the love of God to sinful men! Surely such love would never turn a broken-down, bankrupt, outcast sinner away.
If a loving mother, whose daughter had fallen through sin and left her happy home, would not lock the door at night, but simply leave it on the latch lest the fallen one should think of returning home and find the door bolted and go away, surely divine love, to say the least, is as compassionate as that.
When the daughter returned she had only to lift the latch and walk in. That easily lifted latch told her that her mother’s love had not changed to her.
Oh! the boundless, unfathomable love of a Saviour God that, in spite of man’s rebel hatred against Him, shown by spitting in the face of His blessed Son, still waits to be gracious and welcome the vilest!
Reader, words of ours cannot express it to you as we would like. Taste it yourself. Come to him in all your need and wretchedness. Cast yourself on His infinite compassion in Christ. Believe it for yourself and you will be able to tell to all around what a portion is yours.
Let your soul drink in this wonderful verse in all its divine sweetness: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Look into the greatness and blessed simplicity of that one verse.
It has been the means of blessing to thousands. Have you ever taken it home to yourself? You are one of the fallen world. You are not an angel either fallen or unfallen. You are a man. Aren’t you? Put yourself out of that big circle (the world) you cannot if you try. God so loved you. Can it be true? It is true if you are in the circle of the world.
He might have turned against you because of your sins against Him. He might justly have sent you to hell. Mightn’t He? Ah! lift up your heart to Him now at this moment in thanksgiving that, instead of putting you into hell for your sins, He put His own dear Son on the cross, in love to you, to bear the judgment of them, that you might go free. Do you see it? Then thank Him now.
“Whosoever believeth.” What does that mean? “Whosoever” means you or anybody. “Believeth” means that you take all to yourself and give God the credit that He did it for you.
“Shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Thank God for those simple yet blessed soul-emancipating words. Think of them for a moment. If you believe in the Son of God who died for you, you have everlasting life. You need never fear that you will perish, because Jesus says you shall not.
Death may touch your body, but it cannot rob you of that life that is eternal in its source and duration. “He that hath the Son hath life.” Precious possession in the Son of God for all who believe! It is Christ Himself who is our life. “I give unto my sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”
“Jesus’ loving heart yearns o’er thee,
And His arms would thee embrace;
See what wondrous love and glory
Beam in his dear face!
He can meet thy soul so wretched,
And can heal thy deepest woes;
Lo! His hand is still outstretched,
This His own word shows.”
P. W.