Probabilities against the Sinner.
By L. H. R.
My impenitent friend, you hope and expect to be saved; but, humanly speaking, you have more reason to fear that you will be lost. 1. It is easier to be lost than to be saved. To be saved, you must resist the current; to be lost, you have only to float with it. To be saved, you must awake to the greatest earnestness, and use the powers that you have; to be lost, you have only to remain as you are, indifferent, quiet. "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." 2. The number of believers is small in comparison with the company to which you belong. "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Yet all the impenitent, and you among them, seem to be expecting salvation. 3. You have heard truth enough, if this were all, to save the world. In how many instances in the days of our Lord, in reply to the briefest statements and instructions, perhaps a declaration so simple as, "I am he," was the answer returned, "Lord, I believe." But you have had "line upon line, precept upon precept," from your youth up. Many of the heathen melt and bow with vastly less light and knowledge than you possess. 4. In how many ways and instances have you been warned—by the expostulations of the pulpit, by pious friends, by personal afflictions, public calamities, and mysterious providences. You have seen others fall on your right hand, and on your left. You have lost dear friends. You have been brought down to death's door yourself. But you are yet in your sins. Is it likely that there is any form of the approach of death in reserve, or any kind of trials or other warnings which will be likely to bring you to Christ, when all these that are past have not? No new Saviour will be provided for you—no new gospel preached. 5. You have been wooed by the Spirit. You have perhaps seen and felt the power of the Spirit in what are called "revivals of religion," and at such times particularly have been almost persuaded to become a Christian. But you said to the Spirit, "Depart." You suffered opportunities, more favorable in themselves than any you will ever again enjoy, to pass unimproved. 6. Added to all this is the force of habit, which has been, and is hourly riveting your chains. Oh, what a hold has sin upon your heart! Sooner may the "Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots," than you "do good, who are accustomed to do evil." 7. Does not the indifference which you now manifest with regard to your soul's salvation, show that you are one of those whom the god of this world has blinded, and that there is great danger you will be numbered with the lost? How critical, how fearful, is your situation! And yet there is hope for you in Christ. You are not yet lost. Oh, avail yourself of the help proffered in the gospel. Look to Him, and live. "Haste, O sinner, to be blest,
Stay not for the morrow's sun,
Lest perdition thee arrest,
Ere the morrow is begun." [L. H. R.]