Almost, but Lost!

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 18, 1878

Almost, but Lost!

“MANY years ago,” says Dr. William M. Taylor, “while we were ministering to a church in Liverpool, it was our melancholy duty to go to the widow of the first officer of the Royal Charter, and tell her that her husband was drowned. The vessel had gone round the world in safety. Her arrival at Queenstown had been telegraphed, and the sailor’s wife was sitting in her parlor with the table spread in eager expectation of her husband, when we entered to say that he had been drowned with more than four hundred others in Moefra Bay, only two or three hours from the harbor. We never saw such agony as that face depicted when, grasping our hands in hers, she cried with a grief too deep for tears, “So near home and yet lost!””

But what eternal horror shall hang about the doom of those who are “not far from the kingdom of God,” but whose good desires and resolutions, and determinations shall only end in the disappointment of perdition at last! Woe to the man who puts off the day of salvation—the time will come when perdition cannot be put off! Now is the accepted time.

“Almost cannot avail, Almost, is but to fail, Sad, sad that bitter wail, Almost, but lost!”