A SHORT while ago the whole civilized world was stirred at the announcement that two English gentlemen had been seized by brigands and carried away to the mountain fastnesses of Morocco.
Residing with their families in a beautiful villa in the neighborhood of Tangier, after dinner one night in the month of June last, the brigand chief Raisuli, with a crowd of armed Moors, swept down upon the unsuspecting company, and amid a din of voices and the clatter of swords and rifles and horse hoofs made off with their prey into the darkness. An immense ransom of, 420,000 was demanded as the condition of their release.
We see in all this an illustration of the sinner’s terrible plight. A stronger and mightier power than that of the Moorish brigand holds all men in his cruel grasp. But, alas! many there are who know not that they are captives in his chains. He hurries them along the downward road to their eternal ruin, enticing them with the varied baits that he knows so well how to cast before them—drink, lust, the love of money, ambition, pleasure, the praise of men.
Down, down they go, one after another, down to the pit. “There is no God,” cries one as he hurries down to the pit, living his life from cradle to grave as if there were no God. But
there is a God.
There is a God in whose presence all must appear. There is a God to whom all must give an account. There is a God who will by no means clear the guilty—a God of righteousness, holiness, and truth. But listen,
“He is gracious.”
Ah yes! “God is love.” He so loved the world that He gave up His Son for you, friend, that you should not perish.
“There is no hereafter,” cries another as he hurries along down the broad road to destruction. “There is no judgment, no hell, no punishment for sin. You may sin, and sin, and sin, and die in your sins; it does not matter, all will get to that bright and holy heaven after all,” so shout a chorus of sinners as they pour along the highway of sin; but it is
the way to the pit.
But God is gracious. He has been gracious to countless multitudes of sinners who once pursued the paths of sin, but whose feet shall soon tread the golden courts of the city of God. Washed from their many stains in the precious blood of His dear Son, their voices shall soon “join in the chorus that never will end,”
“From every kingdom of earth they come
To join the triumphal cry,
Singing, ‘Worthy the Lamb that once was slain,’
But will you be there and I?”
Yes, God is gracious; He has been gracious to me. He waits to be gracious to you. “Diver him from going
down to the pit,”
He says.
Satan is plotting your ruin, God desires your deliverance from his hellish grip. Satan cries, “here is no pit,” and his poor silly thoughtless dupes hurry along blinded, bound, and fettered.
How can they be delivered? How can they be set free? How can they be plucked from his grasp? Listen, “I have found a ransom.”
Thank God, then, dear friend, you need not be lost, you need not go down to the pit,
a ransom has been found!
Yes, God Himself has found it, a perfect, an infinite, an all-sufficient ransom.
God is holy and righteous, and man is sinful and guilty. What is to be done? How can that holy God and that guilty sinner stand together?
Ah, there is a mediator—one mediator, and only one—a mediator between God and men the Man Christ Jesus. What has He done? Listen, “He gave Himself
a ransom for all.”
Is this not sufficient? It is enough for God—why not, then, for you? Will you be so foolish as to refuse the ransom that God has found? Could we conceive of such folly as that the captives of the Moorish brigand chief should have rejected the costly ransom of £20,000, and should have chosen rather to be Raisuli’s slaves than England’s free men?
Nay, impossible. How they must have counted the days and hours, how they must have scanned the horizon with impatient eagerness to see if there were no signs of friendly messengers bearing the great ransom money. And how their hearts must have danced for joy and their lips thrilled with delight as they would say to one another, “The ransom is found!”
And, friend, why reject the ransom God has provided for sinners?
“Forsake your wretched service,
Your master’s claims are o’er;
Avail yourselves of freedom,
Be Satan’s slaves no more.”
But at any rate be sure of this, that if you are lost in eternity and find yourself in outer darkness, the fault will not be God’s. While warning you of the dread reality of the pit, He announces the glad and joyful tidings of deliverance, “I have found a ransom.”
A. H. B.