SOME time ago I was leaving the platform of a railway station, when a little incident occurred which has engraved itself deeply on my memory; not the incident so much as what it suggested.
A passenger train had pulled up. At one of the compartment doors appeared. a flustering and excited lady, who vainly and unsuccessfully endeavoured. to undo the window, by which means she might get her hand on the fastener and so get out. Getting desperate, she beat at the window, and thereby attracted the attention of an official, who, stepping forward, at once undid the fastening, and so gave her a means of exit, but as he did so he remarked in soothing terms and with assuring voice these significant words so often used, “Plenty of time! Plenty of time!!” She seemed gratified and pleased when she found herself, her children, and all her belongings on the platform.
As I left the scene I could not help comparing this little incident and its outstanding features, with one of far more transcendent importance, a matter fraught with the issues of life or of death, of heaven or of hell, to you, dear reader. Without indulging in metaphor, for it is the distinct revelation of God’s word, I solemnly say to thee, dear reader, you are a traveler either to heaven or hell. You are either on the “down line,” the terminus of which is that dark world of despair; or you are on the “up line,” carried along in the right train, “higher and higher yet,” towards that terminus on the heavenly shore.
Dear reader, if a Christian it must be with a heart welling over with thankfulness and joy that you contemplate all that such a terminus means for you. But oh! if unsaved, what can your emotions be as you meditate on your position? Do you mean to “chance it?” Oh! friend, has the “weeping and the wailing” of tormented creatures who in life turned their backs on God and would have none of His love, and who now are enduring misery and remorse for such stupendous folly, has the knowledge of their condition no voice for thee!
Ah! you say you have a long lease of life yet, no present danger of your collapse, you mean to enjoy life and have the round of its pleasures. Is such your decision? Take the advice of one who loves your soul because God yearns over it in paternal regard, and think again. Do not be be-fooled by the arch-enemy of souls, who says, “Plenty of time! Plenty of time!!” but believe the word of God, which declares, “NOW is the accepted time.”
But, if you will persist in your course of transparent folly, your blood shall be on your own head. “God called; you refused. He stretched forth His hands, and you did not regard; therefore (and oh, think of it, dear reader, how solemn it is!) He will laugh at your calamity, He will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as a desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind.”
May God enable you to “flee from the wrath to come” to Jesus, the Saviour, now! Amen.
C. B.