TIME is fast hurrying each and all of us into eternity. With swift and noiseless wing it is flying, flying, flying. We cannot stop time’s rapid flight.
Six thousand years have nearly finished their course, during which period death, pitiless and cruel, has been doing its ghastly work. The monarch and the peasant have shared alike. The strongest as well as the weakest, the youngest as well as the oldest, have come under its awful crushing power.
Reader, what if your turn came next? If so, what then? Where would death land you? Would it find you in your sins and unprepared to meet God? Eternity is nearing. Death’s arrows are flying fast and thick around us. If death comes to you, and finds you unrepentant, your eternal doom will then be sealed. There is no pardon in the grave, and repentance will then be impossible. Consider your latter end; you cannot afford to lose time or be in the least indifferent. These questions are too serious to be trifled with. They demand your earnest and immediate attention.
Fancy a man sleeping five stories high when the cry of fire is raised, and he suddenly wakes up to find every way of escape cut off but the window! of his bedroom―would he be unconcerned? Would he not soon cry for help? And if the fire-escape were placed at his disposal, would he not be thought a madman if he did not at once lay hold of it?
Or picture to yourself a man returning from the gold-diggings, after accumulating a vast fortune, with which he sets foot on the steamer and sails for home. He perhaps is picturing to himself a bright future in this world, when, to his great surprise, it is reported that the main-shaft of the vessel has broken, and that she has sprung a leak. Could you imagine that man clinging to the foundering chip because he was unable to take his fortune with him?
If you are not saved by God’s grace from the awful judgment that awaits this godless world, your case is more desperate than either the man in the burning house or the one on the sinking vessel. You may say that you neither see it nor feel it. That only makes your case the more pitiable. You are not the more secure on that account.
You could understand a man having his senses stupefied with wine or strong drink being quite indifferent on the sinking vessel or in the burning house, but not a man in his saber senses. If you do not see or solemnly feel your danger, we tell you plainly and in love that your spiritual senses must have been totally dulled by an opiate of Satan. He “blinds the minds of them that believe not,” the Scriptures tell us. May God arouse you, and drag you out of this subtle snare.
The question of your soul’s salvation must be of the most supreme importance when Jesus said, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” and when Paul, by the Holy Ghost, said, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” These are momentous, solemn, heart-searching questions!
The whole world and God’s great salvation are put on the scales. Weigh the one against the other in the fierce, searching light of the eternal world.
Which will you choose? Which will you lose? Your eternal fate is decided by your own choice. If you are brought to a standstill, face the reality of it in God’s presence and turn to Christ now. He wants to save you because He died to save you.
If Christ Jesus, God’s own blessed Son, died in love to save you, He cannot possibly be indifferent to your state. If nothing less than His death would do, your state as a sinner must be serious. The blessed God cannot be indifferent about you when He thought so much of you as to give His own Son to meet the judgment that lay upon you. Why will you go on to eternal ruin in the face of such amazing love? How can you be careless in the face of it? Never was love so great. It quite surpasses all human thought.
The wife of a Christian man in a Yorkshire town died and left him with ten children. A kind and loving friend, in consideration of his circumstances, offered to take one child from him and to bring it up as his own. The man was not very well off in this world, and it seemed quite a temptation to part with one. However, when he began to think of the eldest and came down to the youngest, he felt they were all alike dear to him. Each had its own peculiar place in his affections, and part with one―only one―he could not, even though he knew it would be a temporal relief to him, and that his child would be better cared for than he could care for it.
Reader, this man would not part with one out of ten, yet God had only one―His well-beloved―and He gave Him to die for you. Did you deserve such consideration from God when you had so sinned against Him? How have you treated such love? Have you received Jesus, His love-gift, and thus believed in God’s great love to you?
Not to receive Him as the One that God sent to save you, is to slight God’s interest in and love to you. Not to believe in Him, will be your eternal condemnation. “He that believeth not is condemned already.” “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Sweeping statements these! They came from the holy lips of Incarnate Love. Think over them solemnly! Ponder them deeply!
Reader, look up at this moment to God, and if you have never thanked Him for His great love to you, do it now. Thank Him for giving His only begotten Son to die, to save you from the awful judgment your sins deserve. If you do, peace and joy will fill your heart. To thank Him is to receive His gift. When a gift is received, thanks are returned as a usual courtesy. Say in your heart truly, and with your tongue and lips audibly, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”
If you long for true pleasure and satisfaction, there is only one place where it can be found. That is in Christ. How many unsatisfied hearts and discontented minds there are in this world! The world is full of discontentment and unsatisfied desire. It is reported that a lady, who was living in the very height of opulence, said that she wished she had been borra a slave, because she had been blessed with the awful curse of plenty of money and nothing to do.
What a contrast this was to the dear old saint whom nearly the whole religious world knows about now. When she lay dying on a garret floor in London, a missionary of the city called to see her. Feeling deeply for her in her dying state, he exclaimed, “Poor thing!” and afterward went out to purchase some oranges for her. On her hearing him say “poor thing,” she at once replied, “I am not poor, I have Christ―what want I more?” These beautiful lines were afterward composed on her dying words: ―
“In the heart of London city,
‘Mid the dwellings of the poor,
These bright golden words were uttered,
‘I have Christ―what want I more?’
By a lonely dying woman,
Stretched upon a garret floor,
Having not one earthly comfort,
‘I have Christ―what want I more?’
He who heard them ran to fetch her
Something from the world’s great store;
It was needless, died she saying,
‘I have Christ―what want I more?’
But her words will live forever,
I repeat them o’er and o’er;
God delights to hear me saying,
‘I have Christ―what want I more?’
Oh, my dear, my fellow-sinner,
High and low, and rich and poor,
Can you say with deep thanksgiving,
‘I have Christ—what want I more?’
Look away from earth’s attractions,
All earth’s joys will soon be o’er;
Rest not till each heart exclaimeth,
‘I have Christ―what want I more?’”
Christ not only meets and fully relieves the most guilty conscience, but He is enough to fill the greatest mind, and satisfy the most unsatisfied heart, and set at perfect rest the most restless, troubled soul.
Weary, troubled, tempest-tossed soul, if you have tried the world for pleasure and satisfaction, we invite you to turn to Jesus, and you will find how true His own words are: “He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” Thousands who have tried everything the world could offer have turned from it heartbroken and disappointed, and found all they wanted in Christ. He is “the chiefest among ten thousand... he is altogether lovely” (Song of Sol. 5:10-1610My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. 11His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. 12His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. 13His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. 14His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. 15His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. 16His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. (Song of Solomon 5:10‑16)), and He says His heart is large enough to welcome you.
P. W.