The Ice-bound Whalemen in the Arctic Seas.
The country was recently startled by the tidings that more than a score of whaleships had been abandoned in the far north, to the crushing ice, the men escaping by vessels outside the crystal barrier, and reaching their homes. What a struggle was there in the hearts of the brave captains, before the fortunes in those ships were given to the frost and storms of the wintry ocean! But the claims of humanity and home made the duty clear; left no choice between life and death. It is thus in regard to the sinner’s salvation. God uses the motive of fear, because obligation to him, and duty to others, have the great underlying question of destiny. The whalemen, while looking in thought homeward, and considering their relations to those whom they served, were compelled to come back to the simple fact of death with their floating treasures, or life without them. There was no cowardly fear in their calm yet earnest decision and action. And so God covers with obligations to him and the world, in every sinner’s case, the stern, unchanging question of a home in Heaven, or the “second death.” Jesus sent through all time the tremendous interrogation, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Refusing to answer, or waiting for a “convenient season,” souls are every hour sinking in a shoreless deep, where no green thing is seen, and no friendly voice is heard forever! Who, if lost, can complain of the patient Lord of all, when he was entreated and warned not to trifle with eternal doom, in the declaration, “All that a man hath will he give for his life.”—Am. Messenger.