IT may sound strange, but it is only fact to I say that it is quite possible not only to freeze, but to die of cold, in tropical regions, whilst one's companions but a few miles off are sweltering beneath a burning sun.
There is nothing weird about this. You need not call in a "witch-doctor" if you wish to experience it. You simply find some mighty mountain whose crest pierces the clouds far above the snow-line, then, leaving the heat-bound plains, you climb it—that is all.
Only quite recently has man's foot for the first time been planted on the summit of the mighty mountain Ruwenzori, in Central Africa. Attempts have been made before, but the first to succeed was the Duke of Abruzzi, cousin of the King of Italy.
After accomplishing this feat he sent a cable to his royal cousin.
“No one can imagine," he said, "the emotion which I felt when we came to the summit of the glorious mountain. Around us rose peak after peak of glittering, snow-clad mountains, all virgin white, and without a sign of life anywhere. When silence fell upon us the only sound which broke the awful stillness was the crack of the ice; even the wind was calmed, and the sun, while turning the snow and the ice into one vast diamond, gave not the least heat. We were like to die of cold. What cold! Your Majesty has no conception—no Italian can have—of the cold on that awful mountain, and the majesty and grandeur which reduced us men, so proud of our achievements, to atoms at the mercy of Nature.”
It is hardly likely that either you or I shall ever accomplish anything beyond a trip up Snowdon or something of that sort. The pleasures and perils of mountaineering are reserved for the few. And yet all around us are millions striving; they toil and moil through the livelong day, and why? Only that they may attain to a little greater height, and plant their feet upon some eminence to which they have not yet attained.
Many are climbing the mountain named "Wealth." Money is their god. They value it for its own sake, and delight to amass it. But its peak is very lofty. It rises to the height of quite ₤40,000,000 sterling, and though one or two are at or near its summit the great majority are toiling far below.
Multitudes are on the mountain of" Pleasure." They are eager for money it is true, but they want it not to keep, but to spend on the gratification of their own natural desires. It is a very alluring mountain, its crest crowned with innumerable pinnacles. Each climber thinks his own particular pinnacle is the best.
Again, not a few climb the mountain of "Religion." They aim at securing a place in the favor of God and a mansion in heaven. Onward they toil, adding prayer to prayer, work to work, observance to observance, rite to rite. One day they hope to reach the summit of full self-satisfied complacency with themselves and that kind of good and holy feeling which will assure them that all is well.
But these are only prominent peaks in the great mountain chain, and around them are many lesser ones each of which has its own votaries.
What is the end of it all?
You may well ask that. The italics in the quotation from the Duke's cablegram were mine. I purposely put them that you might notice what he found when he reached the top.
He found himself in the region of DEATH.
He was chilled to the marrow by the awful cold.
He apparently never in all his life felt so small before. He started a Duke, but there he was only a man, nay, less—"an atom at the mercy of Nature.”
Which mountain do you climb? and on what are you spending your energies? Well, whichever it be, this is the prospect before you. In the book of Ecclesiastes we read the pitiful wail of Solomon. He tells us how dead and cold and small everything is to the man who has reached the top. Do you not sympathize with him?
The fact of the matter is, we all of us naturally travel in the wrong direction. The way into life and warmth and blessing is not by climbing up, but by getting down.
Salvation is not something to be attained to by earnest, upward efforts. No! it is a deliverance wholly undeserved, but wrought out by Christ alone upon the cross, offered to all, and obtained by those sufficiently lowly to receive it in faith, and on God's terms. Hence "Salvation is of the Lord." (Isa. 2:9.)
Will you have salvation on God's terms? It means coming down, and taking the sinner's place. It means confessing yourself to be but an atom—a very sinful atom—at the mercy of God. Then you will swiftly learn the riches of His grace, and how the precious blood of Jesus, once shed upon Calvary, avails for the putting away of all your sins. There is great peace in having a complete settlement of all, based not on one's own strivings, however earnest, but upon the finished work of Christ.
“Weary working, burdened one,
Wherefore toil you so?
Cease your doing; all was done,
Long, long ago."
F. B. H.