QUITE lately there lived in France a celebrated snake-charmer named Pamela. She was in the habit of taking her venomous pets to bed with her, and letting them sleep by her side.
One morning she never woke. Her lifeless body, swollen into a shapeless blue mass, was found by her friends. The snakes so long tolerated and toyed with had set upon her and bitten her to death. Constant usage had caused her to regard them as harmless, but she had trifled with them once too often.
Not unlike Pamela's snakes, reader, are your sins. In hugging them to your bosom you hug a nest of serpents. They cling to you wherever you go. You take them to bed with you. While your eyes are closed in sleep they surround you. One of these days, unless you get rid of them, they will be your ruin.
When I speak of your sins, I do not mean only what may be called your besetting sins, bad habits, and the like. I mean the great sum of all the wrong things that you have ever thought, or said, or done.
I know a man who committed an awful sin that has stamped its black image upon his memory for life. Perhaps you cannot be charged with any such terrible crime. But is it not true that you have been guilty of a vast number of what people call "little sins"? Petty deceits; lies that you do not think it worthwhile to trouble about; outbursts of temper; hasty words; wrong thoughts: do none of these things lie at your door?
There are sins of omission, too: duties neglected, and God's claims slighted. Such things you may regard as trifles. But all are marked by God as SINS. In His reckoning they are very serious, and render you liable to His righteous judgment.
No wonder that there have been men and women unable to eat, or to sleep, or to work because of the appalling remembrance of their sins! The wonder is that any can go on from day to day heedless of their danger and unconscious of the terrible peril to which their sins expose them. They little realize that they are drifting towards the rocks of eternal despair.
Do you tell me, reader, that you are not one of these? Are you alive to the seriousness of your position? And are you anxious to get right with God?
You reply, perhaps, that you are. You have been trying to turn over a new leaf, doing your best to keep from sinning, and praying for God's help. But none of these things go to the root of the matter.
Would it not be glad news to you if I could tell you of some means by which all your guilt might be canceled, and your many sins wiped out? That is the very thing that I can tell you of, by the grace of God.
By means of the atonement of Christ the sins of your life may be forever blotted out. He became the Sin-bearer upon the cross of Calvary, and took upon Himself the punishment that was due to us. His was the suffering, that ours might be the rejoicing.
If you stake your confidence upon the merits of His blood, and build your hopes upon the atoning sacrifice that He offered, your sins will be washed away. God will put down to your account all the value of that sacrifice. On the ground of it, you will ultimately be taken to heaven. "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7).)
If you turn away from this offer of forgiveness, nothing remains for you but to perish. If you will continue in your sins, you will at last die in your sins; and the Lord Jesus Himself said of such: “Whither I go, ye cannot come!" (John 8:21) H. P. B.