NOW, come! treat this great matter in a serious and business-like way. When do you expect to be able to speak definitely and with assurance as to your soul's salvation?
You will admit, I expect, that things between you and God are not as they should be. You have sinned, and you know it; and God, inasmuch as He is the "judge of all"— the Supreme Arbiter of right and wrong—must punish sin. Further, you know that salvation is to be had. Christ has died and risen again to procure it; in the Gospel it is announced, and any poor sinner, however dark and many his sins, may possess it, if only he repents and turns to God with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I want to know, when are you going to make that salvation your own, and boldly stand up to confess Jesus as your Savior and Lord?
Will you delay another year? The year of grace, 1905, is just starting. Will you definitely vanish all thought of God and Christ, of heaven and hell from your mind until 1906 shall come? Nay, you dare not. Ere the first quarter of the year is gone you may find yourself in the grip of some deadly disease. Look back over 1904. You can think of many, and so can I, who started the year in full health and strength, but they are gone, and their bodies molder beneath the sod. If you value your soul delay not another year!
Will you delay another month? The longest of our months contains but thirty-one days. Yet you are not safe for thirty-one days. Much less than a month ago I was speaking to a young fellow in health and strength, and now as I write it is five days ago since I heard he was dead. Gone! and in much under a month. What about his soul! Ah! it is well with his soul. But that is not the point. What about your soul? If you value it delay not another month.
Will you delay another day? and a day contains but twenty-four hours. Yet when a friend and I were preaching in Bloemfontein a few months back a young Irish lad, a fireman on the Central South African Railway, came to our meetings and came, thank God, to listen. One Sunday evening he came as before. My friend saw him on the Monday about midday and gave him a copy of a book to read entitled, "The Journey and its End.”
Before midnight his journey came to an end—an abrupt, a fearful end. Suddenly, in the dark, from an unexplained cause, he slipped from his engine and was literally cut to pieces. Only one day. Yet a day often makes all the difference between bliss and everlasting woe. If you are wise, delay not another day.
Will you delay another hour? An hour of sixty flying minutes. Take care! Not much more than a year ago, with another friend, I preached the gospel in Kendal, and at one of our meetings we noticed an elderly woman. She listened eagerly, and at the close of the meeting stayed for conversation, desiring to possess full assurance that she was saved. At 8.45 P.M. I shook her hand, and bade her good-bye. She walked home, and, in the act of hanging up her cloak behind the door, at exactly 9 P.M., she dropped, a corpse. Little as we imagined it, she had not another hour to live.
To you who read these pages—yet unblest, yet undecided for Christ—to you I appeal. Your years, months, days, and hours are fast being spent—soon you will cross the fatal line. Oh! if you ever mean to be saved and I believe you do—see to it that you delay not another hour.
You understand—
NOT ANOTHER HOUR,
for thus saith the Lord:—
“TODAY if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts."
"Behold, NOW is the accepted time; behold, NOW is the day of salvation.”
F. B. H.