TWO great houses stand close together in Queen Victoria Street, London. The one is the publishing house of The Times newspaper, the other that of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
All day long, and far into the night, the street below is humming with traffic but who of all those thousands of pedestrians, or those other thousands, who rush rapidly past in motor or cab, looks up to see the symbols engraved upon these buildings?
Adorning The Times building is a clock with the scythe of Time beside it. On the Bible house is carved an open Bible, with these words: "The word of the Lord endureth forever.”
Who can challenge the fitness of these symbols? The Times is like a mirror, gazing into which we see daily change. The ebb and flow of human tides, the entrances and exits of life, are all chronicled there. The Bible is a mirror in which no change has even been observed. There we find the unchanging, the abiding, the eternal.
You step forth, my reader, into another year, and 1910 becomes a thing of the eternal past. Its sorrows and joys, whatever they were, are over, and who can tell what lies before you in 1911? This much is certain:
“Change and decay in all around I see.”
Your name may appear in the obituary columns of The Times during 1911, or, if not of sufficient importance for that, you may be counted amongst thousands of others, and included in the published summary of deaths in the Registrar General's returns. And if so, what then? Have you any certainty? Do you know?
Is it possible to know? Indeed it is. Right across the changing years there shines a calm and steady light. There has not been with it so much as one flicker during over eighteen centuries. THE GOSPEL is the name of that light, and enshrined in the scriptures is it found. Its rays focus themselves upon one great central figure—the Son of God—of whom it is written: "Jesus Christ THE SAME yesterday, and to-day, and forever." (Heb. 13:8.) Well might the poet close his couplet by saying,
“O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
Do not start the new year with good intentions; they will fail you. Nor with resolutions; you will break them. Turn over no new leaves; you will soil them as before. Rather turn back over the old leaves, and face them, with all their stains, before God. Do this honestly, and you will be convinced that you are ungodly and without strength to improve yourself, and that you desperately need a Savior.
Thank God! it is written: "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5:6); and again, "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8.)
Here, then, is just the very Savior you need. His heart full of love, His arm full of power. Trust yourself to Him, put yourself into His hands, and you will be delivered from the service of sin, and brought to God. For time and eternity all will be changed.
You live in a world of change. Nothing is sure. That fact may have often distressed you during 1910, and it will probably distress you again more than ever if you live through 1911. There is for you, however—unsaved reader—one redeeming feature about that fact. Being a world of change, there is still opportunity for you to turn "from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God," thus receiving forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified." (Acts 26:18.)
DIE, and you leave the world of change for the world where all is fixed forever. Die unsaved and you will be damned for all eternity.
Give God thanks that you are still in the world, where it is possible to change. Turn instantly in faith to Christ, and start 1911 as a believer and follower of Him. F. B. H.