THE quarter-deck of a large ocean steamer was brilliantly illuminated with the electric light, and gaily decorated with banners and flags. A fancy dress ball was engaging the undivided attention of a large number of the passengers. Nothing must intrude itself that would spoil the fun or gaiety of the hour. Let the tinsel and the glitter, the dancing and the drinking continue till night has well-nigh passed into day, yet it must cease.
Yes, the pleasures of this world, all-absorbing as they may seem for the moment, must pass away. There is nothing enduring about them. Jesus said, “Whosoever drinketh of these waters shall thirst again.”
Those waters! Are these words to have no wider application than to the waters of the well of Samaria? Yes, reader, they may with equal force be said of all the springs of pleasure in this poor dying world. All, all is passing, passing, passing.
Who amongst that thoughtless throng of dancers is ready for an immediate summons into the presence of God? and yet there is but a step between that scene of forgetfulness of God and the eternity that each one of those dancers must face.
Hush! Do not speak of death. The bare mention of the word would rob the giddy crowd of all their pleasure. “But if a man live many years” — and who can expect more than this? —“and rejoice in them all,” and what, from a human point of view, could be better? Mark it well, reader — a long life of uninterrupted happiness; what more can any one look for in this world? “Yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many” (Eccl. 11:88But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 11:8)).
On the fore-deck of the same steamer, almost within ear-shot of all the frivolity and gaiety of the dance, a sail has been erected into the form of a small tent, within which lies tossing and moaning a poor dying lad. Typhoid fever, that scourge of South Africa, has just hurried his brother into the grave, and now this lad of twenty is nearing the last moment of his short career.
Raising the canvas a little, and creeping underneath, I find myself kneeling at his side, In the interims of his delirium I ask, “Do you know that you have a great Friend that loves you?”
Poor lad! Alone on that steamer, far away from every earthly friend, his brother dead, his mother, though still alive, all unconscious that her child is dying amongst strangers and far away. But “there is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”
To my question comes the brief but glad response, “Yes.”
“Where is the Friend that loves you most?” I ask, fearing that his mind is traveling to his Cornish home.
“Up there!” with an upward movement of his half-closed eyes.
“Is it Jesus” I asked.
“Yes,” was all that fast failing strength suffered him to reply.
“Yes, Jesus loved you unto death, and His precious blood cleanseth from all sin.”
Oh, reader, here was reality! Greater realities, yea, realities of eternity, hung round that canvas tent, than in all the gaudy tinsel of the adjoining gaily decorated ball-room. To speak of Jesus here was welcome, to have spoken that name there would have been unendurable.
“Have you any room for Jesus,
He who bore your load of sin,
As He knocks and asks admission,
Sinner, will you let Him in?
Room for pleasure, room for business;
But for Christ, the crucified —
Not a place that He can enter
In the heart for which He died!
Have you any time or Jesus,
As in grace He calls again?
Oh, ‘today’ is ‘time accepted,’
Tomorrow you may call in vain.”
A few hours more, and just as the dancers are retiring, I once more lift the canvas and creep into the tent. The friend who had been watching has retired too. The lamp is burning dimly, and there, cold and stiff, lies the body of the young lad.
Serious thoughts filled my mind as I left that scene of death, confident though I felt that the dear lad’s spirit had gone to be with Christ, for was he not trusting in the Saviour’s precious blood?
But what a contrast between the unrealities of a fancy dress ball and the realities of a chamber of death! A. H. B.