A Warning.
NEVER was this scripture more remarkably and exactly illustrated than in the following incident which I heard from a young assistant surgeon in Lahore.
The verse is, “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”
“Some years back we were stationed at Agra. I had to look after a detachment of British troops in the fort. You know what soldiers are. They have companions in drink as in everything else. Well, one night ten of them had received their pay, and were terribly tipsy in the great heat, so they chose to sleep in the verandah. One poor fellow lay just as he was on the verandah floor. At two o’clock he got up and shouted out, ‘A snake! a snake has bitten me! Come and kill it!’ So two or three rushed out, and the snake was hunted, but it was dark, and it could not be found. He was well laughed at, and told that he was in the ‘shakes,’ or delirium tremens, and that it was a mouse.
“He lay down then as all the rest did. At 5:45 a.m. the first bugle sounded, and all had to get up for parade. To his horror he found that he could not rise. So after calling for another man to help him, he got up with difficulty. He then came to me about 7:30, ghostly white, and entreated me to do something for him, and said that in the middle of the night he felt a prick behind his ear and thought it to be a mouse, and brushed it away as he thought. But a little after he actually saw the snake, and raised the cry, but he did not think that the prick was a snakebite. So I did what I could for the poor fellow.
“When the doctor came he told me that I could have done no more. The man died at eleven that morning.”
How often do such warnings, alas I pass unheeded; scoffed at, indeed, by those who are blinded by Satan! He knows too well that he has only to go on deceiving poor souls till the day of grace is past, and that then they will be his wretched companions in the lake of fire forever and ever.
Never was there a greater necessity for solemnly warning every unsaved soul. How many of us feel that at any moment the day of grace may close! You will then as surely be too late for God’s remedy for your sin-bitten state as the poor soldier was too late for the surgeon’s aid. Consider this.
Remember that Jesus Christ, though rejected by men in this world, is still the Saviour of poor sinners. He not only assures us that He has died for our past sins, but gives to the one who believes on His name power, through the Holy Ghost, to keep him from sinning, any more. Arise, then, from thy stupor, and Christ shall give thee healing; Christ shall give thee light. A. G. N.