p. 3 | Throwing the Life-Line by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 1, 1909

Throwing the Life-Line

By William Ambrose Spicer

If lost souls are not dependent for eternal life on getting the message of salvation, there is no meaning in the words of Scripture, and nothing in religion. But there is something in religion—everything in it, for time and for eternity. There is a message that will save the perishing, if they will receive it.

And God, who so loved the world, has committed to us that message, and commands us to go with it to every people and tongue.

Right now, with an empty mission treasury, with no money to send new workers or to supply monthly remittances that should now be on the way to those already in the field, we are making up the midsummer offering. This offering is a life-line flung out to the perishing. How far shall the line reach?

A total of only $9,000 or $10,000, as was received last year, would come fatally short of reaching the needs this year. What would be thought of the life-guardsman who, with lines of longer reach available, should throw out a thirty-foot line toward men and women struggling in the waves fifty feet away?

We must not do such a thing in flinging out the line of this saving message. “Lengthen thy cords!” is the command. A five-dollar gift where ten might be given, is throwing the short line. Giving the ten, or twenty, where to the one hundred might be spared instead, is failing to discharge the responsibility.

Nobody, when people are drowning, stops to discuss whether the shorter line will reach, or whether the longer one is required. The longest available is flung out. Let us lay hands on whatever means we can get, and throw out the life-line to perishing souls whose cry comes to us from all the ends of the earth.

W. A. S.