Many years ago, when walking down Phoenix Park, Dublin, a woman, selling apples from a basket, opposite the Viceregal Lodge, pointed out to me a round hole in the grass at the roadside as being the exact spot where the body of Lord Frederick Cavendish lay just after he was murdered. I said to this woman:
"If your body had lain there dead instead of Lord Cavendish's, where would your soul now have been?"
"Your honor," said she, "you have given me a very hard question to answer; but I hope to get to heaven at last."
"Do you side with Lord Cavendish or with his murderers?"
"O, sir," she said, "it was very kind of the noble lord to come from England to help us, and it was very wicked of those cruel murderers to kill him."
"Then you sided with Lord Frederick?" "Yes, sir, most certainly I did."
"My good woman," I added, "this very much reminds me of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who in such love and compassion came from heaven to do this poor world good, and of what this wicked world did to Him. Let me also ask, Do you side with the Lord Jesus Christ, or with the world that murdered Him, and still rejects Him?"
"O, sir, it was very good of that Savior to come and do what He did, and it was very wrong indeed for Him to be treated so badly."
"But you have not answered my question about the Son of God as you did about Lord Frederick. Have you, then, as a needy and helpless sinner, accepted that blessed Savior as your substitute, trusted His finished work, and taken shelter under His precious blood, who came to seek and to save that which was lost'?"
Alas! alas! from the indifferent manner of this poor woman, she was evidently more interested in her apples than in the Savior. Just like those Gadarenes of old, who preferred their swine to the Lord Jesus, who had come to their country, through the storms of Galilee's lake, to cast a legion of demons out of the poor demoniac bound in Satan's chains, and to set him free to love and serve his Deliverer.
I had, therefore, to pass on with another unsatisfactory evasion of the all-important question, the salvation of the never-dying soul. But this is by no means a solitary example of the sad, sad rule of preferring the fleeting things of time and sense to the soul's eternal welfare.
Is our reader, I wonder, an exception to that rule? Think about it solemnly, friend, and give the answer to God, who is light as well as love, and who knows your heart.
"As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin unto salvation" Heb. 9:27, 28. What are you, dear soul, looking for? Is it for Jesus and glory, or for judgment and hell?
A few weeks later I was walking through the grounds of Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, where the Duke of Devonshire has a seat, and where a monument is erected to the memory of Lord Frederick Charles Cavendish, whose father at that time held the title.
I noticed on this monument the following striking inscription:
"Full of love to that country, Full of hope for her future,
Full of capacity to render her service.
Murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin, within twelve hours of his arrival," etc.
Reader, I would not for one moment seek to undervalue what Lord Frederick Cavendish, as Chief Secretary, sought to do for Ireland, nor do I desire to discuss how much his murderers should be deprecated, for that is no part of our theme: but when reading those three first lines of the inscription. most forcibly it struck me how infinitely more applicable, in the higher sense, they were to the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, who in such love and grace for guilty sinners came so far to this world, and suffered so much at their hands. Yes, of Him, and Him alone, can we truly say:
Full of love to lost sinners,
Full of hope for their future,
Full of capacity to render them service.
"Who once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God."
1 Pet. 3:18.
"Who so full of love unfathomable, love divine, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" Phil. 2:6-12.
I beseech you, therefore, leave the murderers' ranks! "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," and be "filled into all the fullness of God," for His peerless name's sake.