IN the beautiful Pere la Chaise Cemetery in France there is to be seen the simple but striking inscription on a tombstone: ―
“THOU KNOWEST.”
The story connected with it is interesting in its pathos and mystery. A― was a famous beauty. At the early age of fourteen she had gained renown as a great singer. Her physical beauty, both of face and form, was almost unequaled. When she appeared on the stage in the early sixties it was commonly said, “All London flocked to hear her.” Wealth rolled in upon her. She was married four times―to her first husband at the early age of seventeen―and four times divorced. When she died she was not much over thirty years of age.
Her biographer writes: “Poor girl! little did I imagine as I saw her radiant in her youthful beauty that within three or four abort years she would be lying dead in a foreign land.”
Yet it was so. She caught a chill while rehearsing in Paris, and died there in August 1868.
Had she been brought like the prodigal to feel her deep need? We know not, nor does her biographer throw any light on the subject. Had she in the quietness of her bed-chamber in her last great agony turned to God, and cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner”? Who can say?
“For while the lamp holds on to burn,
The greatest sinner may return.”
This much we know, by her own desire this telling inscription was put on her tombstone. There it preaches its silent, significant sermon to all who read it. A shorter sermon could not be preached-only two words! — “THOU KNOWEST.” But they mean volumes. What a voice to infidel France!
If our Lord said, “Remember Lot’s wife,” turned as she was into a pillar of salt as a standing witness of her idolatry and worldliness, and of God’s righteous judgment on her, may it not be that God has a voice in the midst of the increasing darkness of France as multitudes pause and read the inscription upon that tombstone. Who can say? God makes His voice heard in ways undreamt of by us.
“God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform,”
What a cast-out, heart-broken woman got comfort from, may comfort the most downcast and debased.
“THOU GOD SEEST ME,”
were words that put new life into Hagar when she was forlorn and desolate.
Reader, does the thought of God’s knowledge of you make you happy or miserable? Does it fill you with joy, or with evil forebodings as you think of the future?
A man of like passions to ourselves said to God, “O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me.... Thou hast beset me before and behind.... Whither shall I go from THY Spirit? or whither shall I flee from THY presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell,
BEHOLD, THOU ART THERE.”
“GOD IS LOVE.” If so, why should men dread love? What makes anyone resent being loved by an Almighty Friend, Creator, Preserver, Upholder, and Benefactor? Why should we all not court the closest scrutiny and inspection of One who is Love? But the One who is Love is also Light.
“GOD IS LIGHT.”
But why dread light? Is it not most pleasant to the eye? Does it not cheer us when it dispels the darkness and the gloom? Why then do men dread the light of God shining upon them? Ah! that tells a tale, and a sad one!
MAN IS IN DARKNESS, AND LOVES IT,
He hates the light of God, which shone out in all its intense brightness in Christ Jesus, His well-beloved Son.
What has brought in the darkness, the moral darkness in which men are? I answer in one word,
SIN.
If God made man, He made him for Himself. He has the right to be obeyed wholeheartedly. Do men then yield that whole-hearted obedience to God, which is His rightful due? Reader, do you?
What remains for men when they prove themselves unrepentant rebels? Punishment!
WHAT KIND OF PUNISHMENT?
Listen most attentively and earnestly, “But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, INDIGNATION and WRATH, TRIBULATION and ANGUISH, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile” (Rom. 2:8, 98But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, 9Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; (Romans 2:8‑9)).
That is the fixed and final verdict. No alternative of that law for any. Slight it men may, or grow indifferent or callous to its fearful import; but none can escape it.
Reader, do not risk it. It is too awful to do so. Do not take a fatal leap in the dark when the true light shines for all. Let the light of God through Christ shine into your soul. He shines in His love for YOU. You may be saved. “Behold, Now is the accepted time; behold, Now is the day of salvation.”
P. W.