He that has no present Christ has a future, dark, chaotic, heaving with its destructive ocean; and over it there goes forever—black-pinioned, winging its solitary and hopeless flight, the raven of his anxious thoughts, and finds no place to rest, and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of evil in the present and evil in the future.
Oh, prodigal, you may be wandering on the dark mountains of sin, but God wants you to come home. The devil has been telling you lies about God; you think He will not receive you back. I tell you, He will welcome you this minute if you will come. Say, "I will arise and go to my Father."
You admit there is a God; yet you offer Him no homage; you never worship Him. You admit that you are a sinner; yet you exercise no repentance; you make no effort to become holy; you make no use of the means to secure pardon, and to avoid the wrath to come. You admit that you can be saved only by the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ; yet you are not seeking to obtain an interest in His blood. You profess to believe that there is a heaven; yet you are making no efforts to secure it; a hell, yet you make no efforts to avoid it.
Ye will not pray; ye will not shun temptation; ye will not renounce known sin; ye will not fight against evil habits! Are ye stronger than God? Can ye contend with the Eternal One? Have ye the nerve which shall not tremble, and the flesh which shall not quiver, and the soul which shall not quail, when the sheet of fire is round the globe, and thousand times ten thousand angels line the sky, and call to judgment?
