When we were at Bombay we saw a remarkable scene. An Indian woman came into the market-place and by her side was a sack full of serpents. Opening the sack she began playing on a reed flute. The released snakes, quivering under the effects of the music, raised themselves on their tails, lowering and extending themselves, balance their flattened heads to the cadence of the air.
But look! she has thrown down her flute.
Her arms crossed on her uncovered breast, her neck extended, her eyes brilliant, she waits thus. The writhing mass of hissing serpents surround her, twine themselves about her feet, her body, her arms.
In the midst of this horrible encircling, constantly expanding and contracting, the woman stood erect, grand and fierce, implacable and triumphant.
Suddenly, by a rapid movement, the young woman disengaged herself from her defiling environment, which she shook off like filthy rags and stood forth free again. Then she chose the most dangerous of the reptiles, the Egyptian ceraste, and played with it in a way that was curdling to the blood of the onlookers. When the charmer advanced, the serpent retired; when she retired, it followed her; when she looked fixedly at it, the snake flattened itself out. It was her slave, her subject, her very own altogether. At times the snake, overflowing with venom, opened its vile mouth and prepared to spring; but as it did so, the charmer seized it, and fixing upon it her hypnotizing look, rendered it inert, turned it round and round, and then let it fall at her feet helpless and vanquished, as though struck by lightning.
The spectators applauded furiously, and bouquets were cast in heaps about her. She stooped to pick up a bunch of roses. Instantly she raised herself again, the paleness of death on her face. She had been bitten by the ceraste, which clung to her finger like death itself. Slowly the charmer sank down on the sand of the ring and expired.
She died, as so many victims of the poison of death die, killed by the vices they have loved. The sins they caress and the lusts they yield themselves to are the serpents which kill them at last.
Look at that young man who now seems so full of health and strength. He has already been bitten by a serpent whose bite is fatal. Soon you will see him failing prematurely, used up, sick, dying. He thinks himself master of his passions, but they will master him.
Look into that saloon. It is full of men talking, laughing, drinking. The serpent whose bite is deadly has bitten them.
They, too, face the death of the body. God has said "the wages of sin is death".
After this brief life has passed, for those without Christ then begins a never-ending death, an existence without termination of indescribable and unceasing agony for "their worm dieth not," and the fires of God's judgment never go out.
The venom of the serpent could only destroy this life; the venom of that old serpent, the devil, extends into eternity and results in the second death. Oh, why will you die! Turn to God, accept the provision His grace has provided for you in His blessed Son, and have eternal life.
Read Num. 21:6-96And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 7Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 8And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 9And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. (Numbers 21:6‑9); and John 3:14-1614And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:14‑16).