THE following melancholy incident occurred some years since, and illustrates the dreadful issue of a soul's entanglement in Satan's delusions.
The S— were one of two families in the outskirts of T—, in the south of England, who were regularly visited. One winter's evening the writer sat with S—, his wife, and their two daughters, seeking to lead them to Christ; but instead of asking that question of questions, "What must I do to be saved?” S—, raised some question concerning election, by doing which he, like so many others, doubtless sought opportunity to show his orthodoxy on this much controverted point of truth. He was a staunch Calvinist, so that election was his boasted fort. But, through the misuse of Scripture, alas! this doctrine, so precious and sustaining to the saved, was Satan's fort too for poor S—, who used it to retain him captive, immuring him filially by his devices in the lowest dungeons, as the sequel proves. It is Satan's common and delusive practice, to occupy the unsaved with what alone is applicable and yields joy to the saved, and vice versa. What profit is there to be found in a consideration of "election" for guilty, hell-deserving sinners, when “God commands all men everywhere to repent," in view of the dreadful day, which fast hastens on?
One Lord's Day morning, after the conversation above referred to, the boys of my Sunday school class told me that S— had disappeared the evening previously, after I, having been visiting in a neighbor's house, had passed by his door; that he was absent all night from home, and nobody knew where he had gone. Going to his house next day, I learned there was hope that he went to see relatives living at some distance from T—; but the hope was doubtful, inasmuch as, contrary to his usual custom, he went out in. his worst clothes.
It was known that he was in depression of spirits, for he had been out of work for some six or eight weeks, with a sore leg, and his family was in want in consequence. Days passed by and nothing was heard of S—, until, a fortnight after his disappearance, his body was discovered in a canal, where he had committed suicide, to terminate his anxiety, as he vainly hoped.
Dear reader, want, anxiety, distress, may not drive you to this awful earthly end. But have you not want? are you not anxious? in distress, perhaps, in view of what you may expect beyond death? Death here may not occasion such sadness as did that of poor S— to his friends; you may have kind friends to smooth your dying pillow; kind hands to close your lifeless eyelids; your body may be committed to the dust with most becoming reverence; — but, your soul? Before a holy God, will it not realize, in ten thousand-, all the want and distress which drove S— to his end?
But is there need for this? No, thank God. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil; by His death at Calvary He has done so for every believer. Take Him as your refuge; and there also you will find all that can satisfy your needy soul. Jesus said, “He that cometh to ME shall never hunger; and he that believeth on ME shall never thirst." “And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." “Believest thou this?" J. K.