DURING one week in March of last year over eight hundred lives were lost through snowstorms and snow slides in the Rocky Mountains.
The passengers (over a hundred in number) on train No. 97 had a very narrow escape. The catastrophe is described as being "missed by the narrowest margin." The train had passed a certain point east of Field station, and less than a minute after a snow slide took place, burying the track for a thousand feet to a depth twice as high as a Pullman car.
The passengers found a second slide blocking their forward motion, so they had to do the best they could at Field station between the two slides, till the rotary plows cleared the way for the train to proceed. Blinding snow, rain and sleet fell alternately. The wind blew through the pass as through the small end of a funnel. Their condition was indeed serious.
But what would have happened if the snowbound passengers had been told that if they did not quickly get away from between the two slides an avalanche of snow would fall upon them and bury them alive? They were anxious, anyhow, to get out of their miserable plight. What would have been their anxiety, if they had known that fresh danger threatened, and that they were doomed if they remained where they were?
And yet, unsaved reader, your danger is infinitely greater than even such a situation. You are between two slides. A lifetime of sin lies behind you, so that you cannot return to innocence, the spot from which our first parents started. You cannot go back a single hour. Judgment lies before you. You are traveling to meet it. You can reason from the past to the future. Sin in the past: judgment in the future. You are indeed between two slides.
And what threatens to fall upon you at any moment, like an avalanche of destruction? DEATH! These railway passengers missed death by the narrowest margin. Your doom draws nearer, and will assuredly overtake you, unless you find a way of escape.
Christ is the way of escape. Reformation in all its forms, good works in all their phases, do not form the way of escape. The Lord Himself said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh to the Father, but by Me." (John 14:6.)
He has faced death. He has borne the judgment due to the sinner. That is why Jesus is the way of escape. God can righteously save the sinner who believes in His Son. God is "just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." (Rom. 3:26.)
Unsaved reader, if you remain as you are, your doom is inevitable. Rouse yourself. Look at the danger. You have no strength of your own whereby to escape. You have no time to lose. Jesus alone can save.
Well may the Scriptures ask the solemn question, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?”
“Behold, NOW is the accepted time; behold, NOW is the day of salvation." (2 Cor. 6:2.)
As you read these lines turn to the Lord, and tell Him you come as a lost sinner, and take Him as your Savior, your way of escape, and He will assuredly save you, for He said, "Him that corneal, to Me I will in no wise cast out." Trust Him and trust Him now.”
A. J. P.