A CLERGYMAN had been recently appointed to his first living. One day he entered the churchyard while the sexton was at work digging a grave. Just then the man found a skull.
The clergyman stooped to pick it up, and was absorbed in meditation when his attention was suddenly arrested. Piercing the temple of the skull was a headless nail.
His first act was to withdraw and conceal the nail. Then, turning to the gravedigger, he asked if the latter knew whose skull this was? Yes, the sexton had himself known the man. He had kept an inn, and had been a heavy drinker. One night he had taken an unusual quantity of spirits, and on the following morning was found dead in his bed.
From further inquiries the clergyman learned that the dead man’s wife—a woman who bore a good character—was still living. But she had married again the day after her husband’s funeral, and this had given her neighbors offense.
The clergyman, having formed his conclusions, visited the woman and questioned her about her late husband. Hearing the same account, he suddenly produced the nail, and said in a peremptory tone, “Woman, do you know this nail”?
The woman was confounded at this unexpected evidence of her guilt. She at once confessed to the murder of her husband, was arrested, and afterward suffered the utmost penalty of the law.
Such a record is a solemn illustration of the words of Scripture, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Every sin, from the cruel murder perpetrated in darkness and secrecy to the evil thought cherished in the heart, must sooner or later be exposed.
Reader, listen! It is written, “Every tongue shall confess to God.” But though the exposal of your sins must be made, you have a choice as to when it shall take place.
In the atoning death of the Lord Jesus the righteous basis has been laid on which God can show mercy to the guilty. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth from all sin.
Hence, he who confesses to God now, in the day of His grace, receives a free pardon. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The one who believes on the Lord Jesus may know that the punishment of his sins was borne by Christ at Calvary.
But if a man enter eternity without having availed himself of God’s way of salvation, he will be arraigned at the bar of Divine Justice. To his dismay he will discover that not one of his sins has escaped the eye of the holy God. Speechless will the sinner stand, as one by one his sins are exposed; speechless will he listen, as the sentence falls from the lips of Christ the Judge.
And how terrible the sentence, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.”
Reader, you must meet God. When shall it be? Now in the time of His grace? or in ETERNITY in the day of His judgment?
Make a wise choice, we beseech you, before you lay down this paper.
M. L. B.