There are, perhaps, many more than we think of who have attended a Sunday school only once. Some perhaps intended to come regularly, but sickness struck them down, and removals took others out of the neighborhood, and they were lost amid the crowd.
How important, then, that on that one occasion they should have heard the gospel. We know it is the custom of many teachers to let the gospel of God’s grace always be heard by their class when they meet; but we fear others are likely to let this slip. They naturally expect to meet their class next Lord’s day, and perhaps for many Lord’s days to come. Thus, in due time, they think, the children will all hear the gospel.
But, besides the uncertainty of life, and the danger of one and another being called away to other localities, there is the one great expected event of the coming of our Lord. Surely, if this were more vividly before our hearts and minds, we should feel each Sunday, as we took our place in the class, this may be our last Sunday; and if this were strongly before our minds, with what earnestness should we speak of Christ and His salvation. How careful we should be that any there for the first time should certainly hear the gospel that day; and how earnest we should be in pressing home the importance of believing then and there: they might never hear the good news again.
Numerous are the instances of persons being converted who heard the gospel but once. Some met with accidents, as they are called, and were cut off, and yet that once hearing the gospel was blessed, and, like the thief on the cross, they were ready for paradise. The blood that cleanseth from all sin made them at once meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.
This is encouraging to many beside those who teach in the Sunday school—to all, indeed, who preach or speak to the moving masses, whose faces they may never see again.
An exiled missionary, away in the wilds of Siberia, once saw in a Tartar’s tent a poor man, lying alone, just dying of leprosy. The man turned his death-stricken eyes towards him, and said,
“I know you.” On being questioned, he replied, “Did you not preach three years since in B—?”
“I cannot recall,” said the missionary.
“Don’t you remember,” said the man, “you stood upon the steps of a house?”
“O yes, I remember it now.”
“You told us about Jesus who died to save sinners, and that men of every nation might come to Him, and He would receive and save them. O sir, I never heard such things before. I then believed in Jesus. I received Him as my Saviour. I never heard of Him before or since. But now I am dying, and am looking to none other to help me.”
Well, do we hold that the return of our Lord may be at any moment of time? and, if so, what effect has it upon us in our service for the Lord? May we catch the spirit of that closing passage in the New Testament, in which, while we, with the Spirit, say to our Lord, “Come,” we also turn to a perishing world, and invite them to “come and take the water of life freely.”
It is a fact, then, that each Lord’s day may be our last; let each new scholar, then, hear the gospel the first time he comes, for he may hear it but once; but God can bless that once to his conversion.