Let Him Alone | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 18, 1874

Let Him Alone.

THERE, before the Saviour’s gaze of tears, lay a city, splendid apparently and in peace, and destined to enjoy another half century of existence. And the day was a common day; the hour a common hour; no thunder was throbbing in the blue, unclouded sky: no deep voices of departing deities were rolling through the golden doors: and yet,—soundless to mortal ears in the unrippled air of eternity—the knell of her destiny had begun to toll: and, in the voiceless dialect of heaven, the fiat of her doom had been pronounced: and in the realm which knoweth and needeth not any light save the light of God, the sun of her moral existence had gone down while it was yet day. Were her means of grace over? No, not yet. Was her temple closed? No, not yet. Were her services impossible? No, not yet. The white-robed Levites still thronged her courts; the singers still made the heavens ring with their passionate litanies and silver psalms; the high priest yet sprinkled, year by year, the gold of the holiest altar with the blood of unavailing sacrifice. No change in her was visible to mortal eyes. And yet for her, from this moment even until the end, the accepted time was over, the appointed crisis past—the day of salvation had set into irrevocable night. It was with her as it was with the barren fig-tree, on which, next day, the Lord pronounced his doom. The leaf of her natural life was still glossy green; the sun still shone on her; the rain fell; the dew stole down; but the fruit would grow on her no more, and therefore the fire was kindled for the burning, the ax uplifted, which would crash on the encumbering trunk.

She was not spared for her beauty; she was not forgiven for her fame. And if it were so with the favored city, may it not be so with thee, and thee, and me? What shall the reeds of the desert do, if even the cedar be shattered at a blow? Yes; the lesson of the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem as she gleamed before him in the vernal sunshine, a gem upon her crown of hills, is this: and oh! may we all have grace to learn it now—learn it even in this solemn week: that as for her, so for us, there may be a too-late; the door may be shut without a sound; the doom sealed without a sight; life may be over before death comes. It is not—(oh! mark this) it is not that God loses his mercy, but that we lose our capacity for accepting it: it is not that God turneth away from us, but that we have utterly paralyzed our own power of turning back to him. And then the voice sighs forth with unutterable sadness, “Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone.” Let him alone, O preacher, for he hates the words of truth! Let him alone, O Word of God, for he hath set his face as a flint against thee; let him alone, O conscience, for he is bent on murdering thee; his sins have become not willful only but willing; he has chosen them,—let him have them. He has loved death more than life, and lies rather than righteousness, and vice more than virtue, and the world more than Heaven, and the lusts of the flesh rather than the law of God. And the Spirit of God hath striven with him, and striven in vain; all, all hath been in vain: let him alone; let him eat of the fruits of his own works, and be filled with his own devices. —Sel.