A PREACHER, in an address, spoke something in this way; “How can you climb that ladder. Can it be done with your hand, while your feet are on the ground? Or, with your feet on the ladder, and your hands clutching something on the ground? You must give your heart and yourself right up to the Lord, and that forever, and you will see how He can bear you up. He will carry you higher and higher.” A fashionably dressed lady passing, heard these words and was disgusted. She spoke with contempt of the preacher. A few years later this same preacher met her. She was so changed in outward appearance, he scarcely recognized her. She recalled to him the preaching about the ladder, then added, “I never could escape from the words I then heard. I felt that I was the person standing on the ground with one hand only on the ladder. But, thank God, the ladder carries me now!”
This votary of fashion had, doubtless, made a profession of Christ, but was enthralled by the vanities and gaieties of life. She was like one whose feet were on the ground and the hand only on the ladder, and until her feet were lifted from the ground she could not climb—she never would get up. The words of the preacher told all too truly her condition, but she was not willing to listen to them; she did not wish to be disturbed in that which was pleasing to the flesh. As she said to the preacher afterwards, “How I did hate you!” This tells out the human heart—how it loves its own way, and how it will not brook reproof. But God’s eye was upon that poor woman; He had marked her as His own, and He caused the words she had heard from the preacher, to be the arrow of conviction to her soul. She could not escape from those words. She recognized that she was the person whose feet were still on the ground, and one hand only was on the ladder, and that would never take her up.
How many of my readers have their feet on the ground, and their hand on the ladder—going on with the world, and yet professing to believe in Jesus? Too many, too many, I am sure. But you will never get up that way. You cannot “serve two masters”— you “CANNOT serve God and mammon.” These are the words of the One whom you have professed to follow. The sad day is coming when He will say to you, It is not enough to have called me Lord; “depart from me.” These awful words will reach your ears, 0 vain professor, if you do not turn wholly to Him. In the words of the preacher, “You must give your heart and yourself right up to the Lord, and that forever.” If you do He will then “bear you up;” yes, “He will carry you higher and higher.”
God will have reality. The heart in the world and the tongue professing Him will not do. If you truly come to Him it will make a change in your “outward appearance,” your thoughts and your ways, even as it did with the fashionably dressed lady, who so resented the preacher’s words until God fastened them home as nails in a sure place.
Reader, are your feet on the ground, or are they on the ladder—the ladder that carries “higher and higher.”
ML 04/01/1906