In the early days of Christianity, persecution was used of God to scatter abroad the followers of the despised Nazarene. They went everywhere bearing the news of salvation, and through them the gospel of Christ was propagated through the known world.
Legend says that when the first missionary arrived in what is now known as England, he presented himself before the king to solicit permission to preach the gospel in his dominions. After long deliberation, a negative answer was about to be given to his application; but an aged counselor, his head silvered with white hair, rose and by a simple plea obtained for the missionary the permission he sought.
"Here we are," said the old man, "like birds of passage; we know not whence we come or whither we are going. If this man can tell us, in the name of the gods, let him speak.”
My reader, is it so with you? Reflect for a moment on the aptness of the figure. Were you to arrest one of these birds in flight it could tell you nothing of whence it had come, of whither it was bound, or of the course of its passage from clime to clime. As for you, if you are still in your sins, what better are you than they? Made for the glory of God, you have sinned and come short of it. You have missed that for which you were created. You are an anomaly among the works of God and, like the bird of passage, you go on from day to day pursuing a blind instinct, going you know not whither. Your origin, your course, and your destination are unsolved problems before your soul now, and you are about to plunge into the blackness forever!
Oh, wayward wanderers from God and from Christ, Stop! Stop in your flight to an unknown eternity! Hear the loving voice of His word that comes to you to warn, to woo, and to win you: "Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?”
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be no longer a mere bird of passage, pursuing only natural instincts, but through that faith become a child of God, and by grace an heir of glory.