HOW fond some children are of mischief and fun! Here are two who are evidently enjoying a little sport. One has found some nose-glasses, and placed them on his nose; looking down through them he is pretending to read a large newspaper which he is holding sidewise at a good distance from him, while his companion looks laughingly on.
All this is very innocent, and I do not think any of us would be ready to blame children for such diversions, but when the days of childhood are over, childish things need to he laid aside. Sobriety is that which is specially becoming the Christian, whether it be aged men or aged women, young men or young women.
Would you not think it most unseemly for one who had just been saved from drowning, to be full of jesting and hilarity? Or, if one who had narrowly, and at much risk escaped from a burning building, would break out in foolish talk. Do you not think the beholders would be filled with disgust?
But O! dear young Christian, you have been snatched from the jaws of hell, whose mouth is wide open to receive all who will not turn to God; you have been saved from endless burnings. Does it not sober you to think of it? And should you not walk in sobriety before an ungodly world that realizes not that the end is destruction!
You have been delivered from the coming wrath. May you, then, by your sober, godly ways, be a living proof to others of the reality of God’s work in your soul!
ML 12/14/1924