Dear young friend, suppose yourself in a railway train, on your way to New York. You have never been there before. The place is unite new and strange to you. You know nobody. But a friend of your own has gone on before you. He knows you are coming, and has agreed to meet you on your arrival. You depend can on him. He will take charge of you at your journey’s end; and among the crowds of strange faces, and the din and loneliness of the great city, you will be free from all anxiety when under his care. That one assurance will dispel all your fears.
But what a sad case yours would be, if in undertaking that same journey you, an inexperienced traveler, had no such one to meet you! You must go. The night is dark, and cold, and wet. You are a perfect stranger, without means and without friends. You are being carried swiftly along to your destination, to be turned out of the train at midnight, desolate and lonely in the heart of that great city. Would not sad misgivings and anxieties overwhelm you, as to what you would do, and where you would go, when the end should have come? Certainly you would think and plan some course, and seek with earnestness any possible advice or help.
Dear young reader, you may in reality he in circumstances far more sad than such I have supposed. Human life is a journey. You are being surely and swiftly carried along. You must go. Soon you may be at your journey’s end—the hour of death. And perhaps you shall find yourself friendless, and helpless, and homeless, when that solemn hour shall have come. Have you any friends or any means? You will be in sad want if you have not. Are you not concerned about what you will do, and where you will go?
Some time since, I was called to visit a dying boy. He was very engaging and lovely, about nine or ten years old. His godly mother was greatly concerned about his salvation. One day, as he lay on her lap, she said to him, with tenderness and tears that told her heart was breaking,
“Jamie, are you afraid to die?”
The tears gathered in his big, bright eyes, too, and, looking up through them, he replied,
“Yes, mother, I am.’’
“What makes you afraid, my darling boy?”
“Ah! mother, I don’t know anybody yonder. They are all strangers to me.” Then, after a short pause, during which mother and child wept together, he added,
“Mother, I would not be afraid to die if you would go with me; but O! I am afraid to go away all alone to be among strangers.”
Before his end came, through the Lord’s mercy and grace, he had become a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and had Him for a friend; and so was delivered from all his fears.
There is only ONE who can be our Friend in the hour of death, and that is Jesus, who did die and has risen from the dead, and took away the power of death to the Christian. It is only to go to live with Him forever.
ML 08/28/1938