DON'T bother me about your Bible," said a fine young man of twenty; “I want to enjoy myself; I'll be religious when I come to a dying bed." How often does one hear such words. Alas! how solemn, for if they who say such do have a dying bed, they more often than not say they are too ill to think about their souls; or their friends, with false kindness, will not allow them to be disturbed. Reader, procrastination is the devil's prime minister; and though you may have heard it thousands of times, I record it again and yet again, that God's word is Now. “Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:22(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succored thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.) (2 Corinthians 6:2)).
One Lord's Day afternoon, about twenty-five years ago, three men went out for a row in a boat up the river Thames. They were all in good health, and were jolly fellows as the world would call them.
They had had a pleasant trip, and were returning home. When just within sight of their landing place, the eldest man arose, saying he felt rather cramped. He stretches out his arms, falls backward, head downward into the river, never to rise again. His friends search for him in vain. They had to go home with the sorrowful news to his wife and family. Two days after his body was discovered in a mud-hole. He was a man who ridiculed the Bible, and looked for a dying bed,— for him it never came! Will my readers be as little affected at this solemn summons as were his two companions? They sorrowed for the loss of his jovial society, his merry songs, a good hand at cards, &c., but the warning seemed despised. They went on still deeper in sins. One at length died without any evidence of repentance the other, after years of debauchery, took away his own life!
These are real facts, dear people; let them speak to you. You surely must have met with similar ones if you know anything of the world.
Almost next door to one of those in the boat, and also employed by him, lived a drunkard. One night, in a drunken fit, he used impious words of God and death. In the morning he was found in his bed a corpse Shortly after a young woman of twenty-one, who lived within sight of all their homes, in an angry it jumped into the canal at the back of the house, and was drowned'
Close by lived a youth of seventeen, known to all I have named. He cared little for his eternal welfare, and looked for a dying bed. One night he parted from a friend, promising to call for him by seven the following morning, but before that hour came he was found dead in his bed.
Dear reader, do not refuse as your Savior God's beloved Son, or judgment—" his strange work "—will surely overtake you. His face is toward you today, and His voice of grace is saying, "Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?" and “Him that cometh to me (Christ) I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:3737All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. (John 6:37)).
. E. S.