“CHARLIE,” as he was called by all who knew him, was a young fireman employed on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Bright and merry, he was a favorite with everyone.
One thing, however, Charlie lacked, and that one thing was the most important of all. In spite of the prayers and pleadings of his dear old Christian mother, he was not saved.
Again and again his mother reasoned with him about his soul, and warned him of his danger. Often when he took his bucket to go out to his engine she would fondly kiss him and say: “Charlie, dear, I shall be so uneasy while you are gone, for you might get killed, and your soul be lost, and then your poor mother would go crazy.”
On the same railroad there was a Christian engine-driver, Billy M—by name. He was much attached to Charlie, and knowing his mother’s anxiety about him used often to speak to him about his need of salvation, and read the Scriptures to him. Sometimes the tears would start to Charlie’s eyes and trickle down his cheeks. He would say that he wanted to be a Christian and was going to be some day, but that there was plenty of time. Besides, he was keeping company with a young lady who was fond of parties, balls, and playing-cards. She had told him that if he became a Christian she would have no more to do with him, for she did not want an old “goody-goody” of a man.
“But,” said Charlie to his friend Billy, “if you can get her to consent, I will promise to be a better lad, if only to please mother.”
Charlie seems hardly to have realized that “being a better lad” would in no wise meet the need that he was in. What he needed was conversion. He was a poor unconverted sinner, going down to hell as quickly as time could carry him. Turning over a new leaf and trying to do better would not put him on the road to heaven. He needed to have his sins washed away through the blood of Christ. In a word, it was not reformation, not morality, but a Saviour he needed. And this he did not seem to understand.
But Billy M—determined to do his best for his friend. So he got him and his young lady together, and prayed with them, and talked the matter over. But she would not yield. She cried, but said she could not bring herself to give up the pleasures of the world just yet. They were to be married in a few weeks, and then, she said, they would both become Christians, and live happily.
In due time the wedding day arrived. Billy was one of the invited guests. He reminded the young couple of their promise, and begged them to commence their married life by coming to the Saviour and trusting in Him for salvation and pardon. But with one excuse and another they put it off, and as time passed on, seemed to grow more careless and hardened than ever.
One day, however, a terrible thing happened. As Billy was getting off his engine, a boy came running up to him and said, “Charlie was injured in a smash down the line this morning, and his wife wants you to go up to the house as soon as possible.”
Billy did not wait to wash, or get his tea, but went straight off to see his young friend.
Charlie was lying upon his bed quite unconscious. He had been seriously hurt, and had passed through fearful suffering. His wife was weeping as if her heart would break. The first thing she said as Billy came in was, “Oh, if Charlie is lost, it is my fault.”
Then she cried in her agony to God to forgive her and spare her husband.
For eleven long hours the faithful engine-driver watched by the bedside of the dying man. Awful hours they were, for the ravings of the poor sufferer, and the words that he uttered during his brief moments of consciousness were appalling. The last words that they heard him say were, “I put it off too long, and my last chance is gone. I am lost! lost! lost!”
The funeral took place, and Billy turned once again to the heart-broken young widow.
“Will you not now take Jesus to be your Saviour?” he pleaded.
“I must get things settled first,” she replied, “and then I will think about it.”
“Oh, said Billy, “don’t say that. Settle this great matter with God first, and let business come afterwards.”
But no, she would not be persuaded. She said she would not put it off as Charlie had done, but there was time enough yet.
At length a darling little baby boy came as a cheer and a solace to the poor sad heart of Charlie’s wife. When it was about three weeks old, an urgent message was sent to Billy M—that the young mother was dangerously ill: would he go and see her?
We will let Billy tell the story of that visit in his own words.
“I went up, but when I was taken into that room, what did I see? I saw the woman who had promised God, time after time, and promised her husband and me, that she would give her heart to Jesus, I saw her dying without hope. Oh, the agony of that woman! She said over and over again that she was the cause of Charlie’s losing his soul, and that she had sent for me to tell me that I had done all I could for her eternal happiness, but that through her own neglect she was damned forever.
“I prayed for her, read God’s Word, tried to get her to accept Jesus as her Saviour, telling her that though she had rejected Him so long and so often, yet Christ was willing to accept her at her last moment.
“She only replied that she could not think of anything except that she had been the means of her dear husband being lost. She begged me to keep a watch over her child, and when he was old enough, to tell him all the story of his parents’ lives, and see that he made sure of heaven. After a little more, she told me in her last words that she was dying like her husband, ‘lost! lost! lost forever.’ So she died.”
As I write the sad words, the tears, unbidden, fill my eyes. Can you, my reader, hear the inexpressibly sad story of the way these ‘two young lives ended without being moved to your very soul? If you can, I pity you.
The story illustrates with awful emphasis the hardness of heart that is the inevitable consequence of a long course of “putting it off.”
Thank God that His mercy is infinite. Both Charlie and his wife might have been saved, if only they had turned to the Saviour. But Satan took advantage of their weakness, and in the hour of their dire extremity pushed first one and then the other over the brink of eternal ruin.
He who treated them thus, is likewise bent upon your ruin. He will use the hardening effect of sin, if he can, to drive you to perdition. Beware!
The blessed God bends over you with deep compassion. He calls you, beseeches you, commands you to turn to Christ in repentance and faith, that you may be saved.
Jesus, by His dying upon the cross, has made it possible for a sinner like you to be saved. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
But remember this true saying: “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Prov. 29:11He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. (Proverbs 29:1)).
H. P. B.