Читать книгу The Deaf Shoemaker - Barrett Philip - Страница 12
“CONDEMNED.”
Оглавление“Now, despisers, look and wonder;
Hope and sinners here must part:
Louder than a peal of thunder,
Hear the dreadful sound – ‘Depart!’
Lost forever!
Hear the dreadful sound – ‘Depart!’”
I saw, not long since, a man busily engaged in branding, with a red-hot iron, the word
“CONDEMNED,”
on a large number of barrels of flour.
On asking him what it meant, he informed me that the flour was not sound, and he was instructed to brand all such “Condemned.”
How forcibly, my dear young friends, did it remind me of the situation of sinful persons – those who have no part nor lot in Christ’s kingdom! What a melancholy spectacle would your Sabbath-school present, if your Superintendent were instructed by a Divine command to brand all the bad boys, and girls too – for we often find little girls as bad as boys – “Condemned!” What would be their feelings while undergoing such a painful and disgraceful operation? Yet God says those who believe not on Christ are condemned already, and you know “His Word is truth.” There is one, and only one, way by which this word can be effaced from your guilty and sin-defiled hearts; and that is by the purifying and sin-cleansing blood of Christ.
Then pray that He will “Create in you clean hearts, and renew right spirits within you;” so that you may love Him better and serve Him more faithfully in the future than you have done in the past.
THE SPIRIT QUENCHED
There is a line, by us unseen,
That crosses every path;
The hidden boundary between
God’s patience and his wrath.
To pass that limit is to die,
To die as if by stealth;
It does not quench the beaming eye,
Or pale the glow of health.
The conscience may be still at ease,
The spirits light and gay;
That which is pleasing still may please,
And care be thrust away.
But on that forehead God has set
Indelibly a mark,
Unseen by man, for man as yet
Is blind and in the dark.
And yet the doomed man’s path below
May bloom, as Eden bloomed;
He did not, does not, will not know,
Or feel that he is doomed.
He knows, he feels that all is well,
And every fear is calmed;
He lives, he dies, he wakes in hell,
Not only doomed, but damned.
O where is this mysterious bourne,
By which our path is crossed?
Beyond which God Himself hath sworn,
That he who goes is lost!
How far may we go on in sin?
How long will God forbear?
Where does hope end, and where begin
The confines of despair?
An answer from the skies is sent:
“Ye that from God depart,
While it is called TO-DAY, repent,
And harden not your heart.”
DR. J. ADDISON ALEXANDER.
