By:
T.W.P. Wolston, Editor
“ALL right; right away, Harry; make haste home,” said the guard of the last train reaching Barnet, Monday night, August 16, 1869, addressing the engine-driver. This train had brought passengers from London, and was now to return empty to the next station up the line. For this the engine had been uncoupled from the foremost carriage, and attached to the guard’s van. All was supposed to be right. The signalman signaled up the line to a goods train that the line was “clear, come on.” The guard of the passenger train jumped into his brake-van, calling out, “All right; right away, Harry; make haste home.” But the “points” had not been attended to and the train was traveling on the wrong line. The faster it went, the more in earnest the guard and driver were to reach home, the nearer it traveled to destruction. For the goods train was also moving on upon the same line―the down line―so that before the two trains had gone half a mile, their engines met, and a frightful collision took place. Miraculously the engine-drivers and stokers escaped with their lives, though much injured. It is supposed that the guard was killed instantaneously. The gas-holder in his carriage having burst, set fire to the other carriages; and the burnt and calcined bones of the poor man were all that remained; and these were AS lifted up bit by bit―each limb, each joint, each bone, each piece of bone, separately, and placed in a sack, to await an inquest. All this had happened because the points were not attended to!
If you were thus to be suddenly called away from this world, are you ready to meet God? The question must be one between your own soul and Him. The great question of eternal importance is, what does God think of you, and what has God done for you? If this “point” is not settled, you are surely traveling on the wrong line―the down line. Your refusing to believe that destruction is before you makes no difference. You may flatter yourself that all is right, that heaven is your home, and you expect to reach it. You are in earnest about it―you travel fast; but “there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 16:2525There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 16:25)).
Stop, fellow-sinner! stop, and think! Are you born again? ―changed from being a child of the devil to a child of God? Have you passed from death to life?
Before another hour flies away, see to it on which line you are journeying. Consider not, I beseech you, these points as insignificant and unimportant. Your salvation, your eternal happiness, depends on these points now. It, will be too late by-and-by. If you want to have Christ in heaven, you must have Christ on earth. If you would have Him for the end of your course for glory, you must surely have Him for the beginning. He is the strait and the narrow gate, and He is the way of life. You must personally know Him, to be saved.
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way which leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” And Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:66Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)). ANON.