MANY years ago there was a young girl in my class at Sunday-school, in whom I was especially interested. She was an orphan, having lost both parents when very young, and had been tossed about in a hard, cold world.
Very little love had the poor child experienced; and yet, under a rough, half-frozen exterior, she had a warm heart, and seemed to cling to the one or two Christian friends who had taken a kindly interest in her welfare. She was intelligent, and very ready with texts and replies in class; but still I feared she was a stranger to the grace of Him who alone can save.
One day I met her in the street, and finding her willing to stand and talk a few moments, I seized the opportunity to press home the question of a personal acceptance of Christ.
“Does it not make you sad, Mary,” I said, “to feel that, if you were called to die, or the Lord Jesus were to come to take His own people home to heaven, you would not be ready? Does it not make you miserable to go on day after day, knowing your danger?”
“It would, if I thought about it, teacher!” was her truthful reply.
How many with equal truthfulness could echo her: “It would, if I thought about it!”
Eternity, away from God, shut out for ever from His presence! Eternity, in blackness of darkness, shut out from the glorious city where “the Lamb is the light thereof!”
If God’s word be true (and you know it is, however much you may try to persuade yourself to the contrary), this is the doom that awaits you.
Poor Mary knew it, but she sought to banish the thought of the future, for she dared not think about it.
But was the awful future less a fact, because she ignored it? Is it less a fact because you ignore it?
Look the question fairly in the face, and get it answered by Him who alone is able.
“How can a man be just with God?”
How can I, a sinner, meet the Holy God? The Lord Jesus Christ has answered the solemn question,
“I am the Way, . . no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” John 14:6.
“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Mark 2:17.
“The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost.” Luke 19:10.
“By Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses.” Acts 13:39.
“Jesus our Lord . . who was delivered for our offences. and raised again for our justification.” Rom. 1:24, 25.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 8:1.
Will it make you miserable to think of this?
Miserable! to know that because the Lord Jesus suffered in my stead I may go free?
Miserable! to know, on the authority of God Himself,
“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”? John 3:16.
Only try it, and you will soon exclaim.
“O! the joy of knowing Jesus!
It is dawning on my soul;
I am finding His salvation,
And the power that makes me whole.”
ML 09/28/1924