A SHORT while ago, I was hurrying to catch a train which was to take me home from a prayer-meeting. The prayer-meeting, though, alas! thinly attended, had been redolent with the presence of the Lord. All who were present had indeed felt it was good to be there, where earnest and believing prayer ascended to the throne of God in the all-prevailing name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Many and varied had been the petitions presented for the work of the gospel in all lands, and for the blessing of God to descend upon every child of His all the world over, and that all His people might be kept from the bodily and spiritual dangers that beset their paths on every hand.
I left the hallowed spot grateful beyond expression to know that it was the Christian’s privilege to have God for him, God with him, and God in him; and as I hurried along I still prayed for the multitudes that jostled one another in the crowded streets, many of whom were, alas! “without Christ... having no hope, and without God in the world.”
Alas! alas! How few of the people of God seem to know the value of prayer, or they never would lightly absent themselves from a prayer-meeting.
My path led me down the Haymarket, past the doors of a large theater. As I passed the first door my attention was arrested by an immense board with words painted in black and white letters, large enough to be read from the other side of the street —
The Stalls are Full!
The next door had an equally imposing board with the words —
The Balcony is Full!
Yet another door remained, and here a board was placed with the following startling announcement—
Only Standing-room in the Pit!
I have heard of one, a theater-goer, who was arrested, and ere long converted, by the words, “This way to the pit,” placed over the door by which he was entering. Certainly, I felt, the announcement I have read tonight is enough to awaken serious reflection.
“Deliver him from going down to the pit,” says a Saviour God; “I have found a ransom” (Job 33:2424Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. (Job 33:24)). Oh! friend, trifle not with your soul, nor mock at the solemn warnings of the Word of God as to the future of those who die without faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a contrast between the prayer-meeting and the Theater! Possibly some Christians may have been at the latter who would more profitably have been employed at the former.
The Lord is coming! In the twinkling of an eye He will translate His own to heavenly glory from this world of sin and sorrow.
Christian reader, would you not rather be “caught up” from a prayer-meeting than from a Theater?
Sure I am that I would rather my precious and all-worthy Redeemer and Lord when He comes should find me praying for, or otherwise laboring for, the salvation of the poor dupes of sin and folly, than sitting elbow to elbow with them clapping hands, and greeting with applause the sights and sounds which the enemy of their souls so artfully devises to obliterate from the memory the past, to while away the present, and to drown all thoughts of the future!
“Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the cross of Christ, my God:
All the vain things that charm me most,
I’d sacrifice them to His blood.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my heart, my life, my all!”
A. H. B.