Picturesque and beautiful, and in some places undulating with trees and deep ravines, rugged precipices and overhanging crags with romantic and lovely banks of a beautiful river which flows peacefully along, which is lovely in Spring and Summer, and largely frequented by delighted visitors.
But the beauties of the river are nothing to a heavy heart, as mine was on an early summer morning, that I had a holiday and was invited by a friend to spend the day in this lovely valley. The truth is, I had been convicted of sin while attending some evangelistic meetings being held in the town, and my friend hoped that a day in the country would free me from what the poet calls "dull care," and restore to me the buoyancy and brightness of earlier years, in which, as a worldly young man, I had shared the common joys of the average young man of the world. But eternal facts had been revealed to me, and pressed on my attention at those meetings, and I could no longer enjoy the frivolities of life as I had done in earlier years. Eternity had come to me as a great reality, and I had no knowledge of where that eternity was to be spent. I walked along the banks of the river, thinking of what I had heard at the meetings the previous week. And the words of a hymn sung at these meetings came to my mind with a meaning which had not been realized by me before. The words were:
O what can equal joy Divine
And what can sweeter be
Than knowing that the soul is safe
For all Eternity?
Safe in the Lord, without a doubt,
By virtue of the Blood,
For nothing can destroy the life
That's hid with Christ in God.
I stood still while these words rang through my memory and left their impress on my soul. Could it be true that I might know my soul "safe for all Eternity." A text often quoted at the meeting, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life" (John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)) came with great force and light into my heart, and I said aloud: That "hath everlasting life," gives me the very thing I have long wanted. I see now how that life may be mine.
Years have come and gone, and many "ups and downs" have been experienced by me throughout the years, but that word "hath everlasting life" is unchanged as it was when I first believed in Christ, and received the assurance of my personal salvation many years ago.
And that Word of the Lord is as true today as it was then. I still rejoice in the assurance of my personal salvation, and testify of it to all my friends and companions. For what the Word of the Lord says is the same "yesterday and today and forever.”
"I change, He changes not,
My Christ can never die;
His love, not mine, the resting-place,
His truth, not mine, the tie.”