SOME few weeks back a man was going along a road one morning to his work as usual in the town of H―, singing the lines of a well-known hymn. When he got to the words,
“When the roll is called up yonder I’ll be there,”
the ground suddenly opened under his feet, and he disappeared into the depths below. He had fallen down what appeared to be the shaft of a disused pit, covered over.
An alarm being given, mining lamps were lowered, but the gas coming from below extinguished them, and the authorities soon found there was no alternative but to leave the poor man to his fate. A funeral service was held over the mouth of the pit in the presence of a large concourse of people.
Reader, had this been your case instead of this man’s, would your precious soul have passed to be with the Lord Jesus? Or would it have passed away to endless despair, where “there will be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth “?
You say this man must have been a Christian.
We trust he was, and that the words he was singing were true, and that the Lord Jesus took him to be with Himself. The great day that is coming will declare whether he was or not. How striking that he should have been called at the very moment he was singing such significant words! But how solemn to think how unconsciously near to death we often are! God is indeed speaking in these days of callous indifference.
A. G. O.