I Hope to be a Christian.
You do! Why then do you not seek to be a Christian? "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye search for me with all your heart." Are you seeking for God with all your heart? No man ever yet escaped from the thraldom of Satan who did not struggle to be free; no man ever entered the strait gate who did not agonize to accomplish that glorious end. Carelessness and inattention afford no foundation for a hope that you are to become a child of God. You hope to be a Christian! Why then do you not give up your sins, renounce the world as your portion, and cheerfully surrender yourself to Him who is the way, the truth and the life? He is ready and willing to receive you. He gave his life a ransom for sinners; he freely gives his Spirit to all who earnestly ask him; he has filled his revealed word with invitations and encouragements to those who desire his grace; he has long been knocking at the door of your heart for admission. How then can you hope ever to be a Christian? You hope to be a Christian! When? Not now. You are too busy, or have something in view which must first be accomplished, or are so indisposed to give yourself to the work, that this is not felt to be the "convenient season." After a while, when you have accumulated a fortune, or passed the period when you can partake in the world's pleasures, or when there is a revival of religion, or at furthest on a dying bed, you hope to be a Christian. But God's commands and promises are for the present. He gives no encouragement to wait for a future season. You have no assurance that there shall be any season beyond the present. You hope to be a Christian! So multitudes of others like yourself, who are living in sin, have hoped, but where are they now? Long ago have they been cut down as cumberers of the ground. Their day of grace and day of life have closed. They lived without Christ, and they died without him; they trifled away their precious time on earth, in the delusive hope that some day or other they would be Christians. That day never came to them, and never will come. "The harvest is past, the summer is ended," and their souls are not saved.—Presb.