S E L E C T I O N S

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 30, 1858

S E L E C T I O N S.

My Reins also Instruct Me in the Night Season.

One day I had been studying on the subject of prayer with reference to the duties of the following Sabbath. I felt oppressed with the ruinous consequences of a prayerless life. My heart was burdened with the thought, but how to illustrate it, I did not so easily find. Upon retiring for the night, the subject was not forgotten.

In the visions of the night, I seemed to be awake and present at a scene that made my frame quiver with a fright that reminded me of Job's words: "When I say my bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint; then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions." I awoke and remembered one had said, "My reins also instruct me in the night season." I was, I thought, near a railroad depot, looking at a train of passenger cars that was rapidly nearing the place where I stood. I thought I could see the engineer so clearly in the face as to read in it a most determined resolution to reach a given point near me by a given second. Soon I saw the cars were off the track, and the whole train in the utmost danger of being dashed to atoms. I saw the engineer set his teeth together more firmly and put on more steam. A massive oak stood between the engineer and the point for which he was making with mad desperation. An instant before the engine reached the tree, I could see the mad-man grind his teeth and suddenly put on the full force of steam. The engine seemed instinct with life to dash foremost at the oak, as if to annihilate it. I seemed to expect to see the oak dashed into a spray of shivers, as with a thunder blow. The fearful crash is over! the train, not the oak, suddenly falls into fragments. The steam and scalding water enveloped as with a baptism of death those already in death's agonies. I looked upon the quivering arms and broken skulls, and woke almost stupified with horror, but what a voice ringing in my ears:—"The man without prayer! The man without prayer!" So oppressed was I at first with the seeming reality of the awful destruction, several minutes passed before I fully gained my consciousness, and still others passed before I took up in reflection what had so deeply impressed the eyes and ears of the soul. "The man without prayer! The man without prayer!" I soon however, saw that horrid scene of death failed to present the strongest features of the death-scene to which every prayerless man is hastening with the speed of time's flight. O that he were but rushing in his headlong haste, alone! But the train, the long train freighted with the souls of others, who can forget that!

As sure as God is on the throne, every prayerless man is wrong. His train is off the track.—He is still putting on steam. Soon will he dash against the eternal foundations of that throne, and those foundations will not be shivered. I determined to cry at the top of my voice as long as I live, to every prayerless man, "Stop! stop! Your train is off!"