WHO could endure the thought? To be in this world without one known friend is bad enough. What must it be to enter the next without one?
Friendless forever! If anything could darken the gloom of such a thought, the remembrance of having repeatedly refused the gracious overtures of Jesus would do it―His outstretched hand disregarded, His love ignored, His call refused, Himself, and His work of suffering, set at naught! What an unbearable subject for contemplation in that place of outer darkness which Jesus speaks of as the destination of the eternally lost!
Timely warning is one marked feature of God’s faithful kindness to sinful men. Even when He records the exodus of a man from this world without a friend, there is, depend upon it, for those left behind, a gracious purpose in that record, a kindly hint that it is still possible for someone else to be found in the same deplorable plight. May it never be the reader’s lot!
Let us look at just one such beacon on the sacred page of past history―the end of Saul the king. Listen to his despairing lament to Samuel (1 Sam. 28:1515And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. (1 Samuel 28:15)): “I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth, me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams.”
In that hour of unbearable bitterness he could only think of one true friend, and he already departed! No doubt Samuel had been a very real friend to him. God’s word to Samuel twenty years before made that apparent: “How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?” (1 Sam. 16:11And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons. (1 Samuel 16:1)). All was over for Saul’s kingdom after that. Yet how patiently he was borne with! On the eve of that fatal day on Mount Gilboa, at the desire of Saul, God even permitted the departed spirit of His servant to return and to speak for the last time to the poor doomed man! But alas, Samuel had no message for him but one of rebuke―another reminder of the saddening past! What a solemn indication was this, that the willfulness and disobedience of years before had never been truly repented of. In vain had space for repentance been granted him; and as God’s thought of Saul’s sin was unchanged, there was nothing for him now but to be held to the righteous consequences of it! Terrible thought!
Has this no voice for willful ones today? When God’s will is known, self-will, that opposes it, is the very essence of sin, even though it be connected with religious service, as with Saul (1 Sam. 15:21-2321But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal. 22And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. 23For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (1 Samuel 15:21‑23)). As surely as Saul was under God’s eye then, we are now. Consider it!
Would you have a real Friend when all else is slipping from you and passing away? Come, then, to Jesus. Seek Him now. Then will you be able to unite with the thousands on earth today who can truly sing:
“We have found a Friend in Jesus,
O, how He loves!”
GEO. C.