An extraordinary story is told of some children picking up a matchbox outside a railway station in a busy thoroughfare. Finding some pretty stones in it, they sat on the pavement and played with them, and then threw them away as worthless bits of glass.
When they got home they told their mother of their find. She had read in the paper of a theft from a jeweler of some valuable diamonds, so she informed the police.
The police realized at once that these must be the stolen diamonds, for the thief was already in custody, and had confessed that he had put the diamonds in a matchbox, addressed them to the criminal police, and posted it at the station post box. The postman, not noticing that it was addressed, treated the thing as a hoax and threw it away.
The strangest part of the story is that the diamonds were found just where the children had thrown them, although the street before the station is the busiest in the city.
What a moral this strange incident points—a moral concerning something more valuable than the whole world, with all its uncounted riches—more valuable than all the gold and diamond mines in the world.
These children did not realize in the least the value of the diamonds they played with for an hour and then threw them away as worthless.
Has this not its counterpart in the way men and women treat their souls, treat God's so great salvation, treat the Holy Scriptures?
And yet how valuable is the soul. O! the deadly indifference of the masses in this vastly important matter. Will you, my reader, not be concerned? Answer these searching questions, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:3636For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36).
Neither the children, the postman, nor the public, who noticed the diamonds lying in the gutter, had any conception of their value. We cannot blame them.
But suppose some reliable person had clearly informed them, that these gems were not bits of worthless glass, but diamonds of splendid luster and worth a fortune, what would you think if they still persisted in treating the diamonds as worthless?
You reply, if once they were informed of their value how careful they would be of them, how they would seek to restore them to their lawful owner.
Friend, you are hereby informed of the value of your soul, that soul you persist in neglecting. If you lose it and pass into a lost eternity in your sins, your neglect will be criminal and suicidal, and yourself alone to blame.
The Scriptures are plain. Read them.
Ponder them. In them you will find God's way of salvation.
If the Scriptures were as diligently read as the sporting news in the papers, and preaching rooms as thronged as cinemas, it were well.
Let the writer beg and beseech of you to wake up to the value of your never-dying soul, of your need of salvation and of the necessity for prompt decision.