SELECTIONS | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 9, 1858

SELECTIONS.

Are there Few that be Saved?

As men have lived, so for the most part they die. When a tree is cut down, on what side does it fall? It falls on the side to which it leans. Leaning to the right, it then falls to the right; leaning to the left, it then falls to the left. These evil livers always incline to the left; and yet, when they are to be cut down, they put in a claim to fall to the right, as good men fall. No measure truly of grace would suffice to accomplish this for them, excepting one, which, like a violent hurricane, should with a miraculous force shove them to the opposite side. But who has ever been made a fit subject to receive such grace? "Scarcely one out of a hundred thousand!" Knowing therefore your present state to be such as to make it far more probable that you belong to the condemned, rather than to the elect, are you not cherishing a presumption, approaching to madness, while you still persist in following the same evil course? Even supposing that in the case of sinners, like yourselves, the majority would be saved and the minority be lost, you ought to be in a constant fear lest your lot should be among the latter. How then will you fare, if the majority shall be lost and the minority be saved?

Arnolphus, Count of Flanders, was once bowed down under the excruciating pain of the stone. His medical man proposed a surgical operation; but he wished that the experiment should be first made on some other subject. Search therefore was made, in order to find all such persons in his dominions, who were suffering from the same complaint. They found twenty such, who were all operated upon by the same surgeons, and then so successfully treated that, out of the whole number of twenty, only one of them died. All the medical men now returned in high spirits to Arnolphus, and recommended him to submit to the same operation. But he, when he heard of its having failed in one single instance, instead of taking heart, turned suddenly pale. "And who among you," he inquired, "will insure me against the fate of this unhappy man?"

And then more intimidated by the death of one than encouraged by the recovery of nineteen, he would on no account consent to undergo such a risk. Now let us suppose, out of these twenty that were operated upon, instead of nineteen being cured and one only dying, the reverse had happened; that the nineteen had died, and only one been cured. What, under these circumstances, would this prudent prince have said? Would he not have immediately driven from his presence those rash and inconsiderate medical advisers? Could any thing have induced him to run the hazard of the operation, under the hope that he must needs be the one eminently fortunate man? Ah, my dear Christians, that rashness, which seems so unaccountable in matters affecting the body, is precisely that of which you yourselves stand guilty in the care you take of your souls?

St. Jerome asserts that not out of twenty, or out of thirty, but that "out of an hundred thousand habitual sinners scarcely one is saved;" and can you then possibly be more emboldened by the happy escape of the one, than put to fear by the sad end of the ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine? Ten was the number of those brethren who went down to buy food in Egypt; yet, when they heard that one of their company must remain there as a prisoner, a feeling of anxiety pervaded them all. Twelve was the number of those disciples who sat down to supper with our Lord the night before his death; yet, when they heard that one of their company should prove a traitor, all of them without exception turned pale. But is no such misgiving raised in your minds, when you know that the majority of persons, who, like yourselves, are living in sin, must finally perish? In you is confirmed what Job spoke of the ungodly: "God gave him a space for repentance, but he abuses it to the furtherance of his pride."—Sel.