“God speaketh once, yea twice, and man perceiveth it not.”
—Job. 33:14.
TWO young men were walking a few years ago by the side of the beach at Brighton, in Victoria. Talking and laughing as youth does, having only this present world in view, and intending to make the most of it while they could, they strolled along. Presently they came to a fence which necessitated their stooping down to go under the rail. Just as they were about to pass through, their eyes fastened on some words written on the fence which caused them to pause. The words were in the form of a question. A searching and solemn one, though often made light of. They read, “Where will you spend eternity?” Others had read it. Thousands have, How have they treated it? Many have laughed and passed on without another thought. Think of eternity? Not they. Pleasure, the world, the passing moment enough for them. The words have no weight with them. Now and again a Christian person reads, thanks God, and prays that some may be led to consider eternity. But there are others, again, who become angry. They hate to be reminded of eternity. Thus it was with one of those young men. In his heart he muttered maledictions on the head of the one who had put those words on the fence, but he could not for all that stop the small voice within. For that voice said, “Eternity, you know where you will spend it. In Hell! In Hell!” He knew he was not living for God. The thought of God was burdensome. God as one who loved him and gave his Son to die for him was unknown. The question, therefore, not only troubled him, but he felt it interfered with his pleasures. Well that it did so, but he did not think so then. That question, “Where will you spend eternity?” was a warning voice from God, and, as he has found out since, the writer of it was his friend. He knows it now to the joy and gladness of his heart. The fence had a message for him. He listened to it. He had to thank God for it, and will do so through all eternity. His eyes were opened. He thought upon his ways: he made haste to accept the salvation of God. A hell-deserving sinner, he found that God loved him. Eternity must have been spent in hell, but another, the Lord Jesus, had on the Cross borne wrath and judgment for him. He learned the Gospel as in 1 Cor. 15:3. Christ having died for sinners, God’s good news was that any lost guilty sinner who trusted in Him was saved, everlasting life their portion, and he now rejoices in the certainty that his sins are forgiven, and that he has passed from death unto life.
Reader, how is it with you? Where will you spend eternity? Will you lie down in Hell for ever, a cast-out one for ever and ever in the blackness of darkness, or will you come now to Christ and obtain the present forgiveness of your sins? Think of it. Think what it must be to be under the wrath of God for ever, shut out from the presence of God, with that awful sentence pronounced upon you, “He that is filthy let him be filthy still” (Rev. 22:11). Consider it, this will be your portion if not found trusting in the blood of Christ, “Be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). This is my message to you, and mine because it was His to me, and blessed be His name it was ever sent, and that I obeyed it. For, reader, the one who writes this is one of the two young men who that day at Brighton read the message on the fence, “Where will you spend eternity?” While many ask, “What good do they think they are doing when they thus write on the fence?” or perhaps they say, “They only make persons angry, and cause them to blaspheme God by thus making religion so common,” the writer knows good does result. If he was the only one, he, at any rate, thanks God for the fence with its message. And, therefore, he has since that made many a fence tell out the message of God, and where no living voice was heard the fences have silently asked the question of many, “Where will you spend eternity?” Reader, again I repeat you are hastening on to eternity. Time will soon be over. Where then?
“After the joys of earth,
After its songs of mirth,
After its hours of light,
After its dreams so bright—
What then?
Oh, then the Judgment Throne!
Oh, then the last hope gone!
Then all the woes that dwell
In an eternal Hell!”
A. C.