A Contrast
A COUKT-ROOM in one of our large cities is thronged with a dense mass of spectators. From floor to ceiling rises one crowded array of anxions faces. The room is as silent as death. A human being is on his trial for life, and his advocate is just rising to make his last defence. Mark the carefulness with which he reviews the testimony. Mark the intense solicitude with which he avails himself of every symptom of feeling in the jury-box. And as he draws near the close of his argmnent, see how his hand trembles, how his face is flushed, how his whole frame is shaking under the weight of an overwhelming solicitude, too great even for utterance. Is he too earnest f Is his appeal too impassioned and fervid? Look at that wretched criminal with his quivering lip, and let him answer! Look at that pale wife, and that group of children, all waiting in agonizing suspense for the fate of a husband and a father! Ask that breathless bystander, and he will answer, ‘’ No! he cannot be too earnest; the life of a fellow-being is at stake; if he manifested any less solicitude, he would not only be wanting in professional fidelity, but even lacking the ordinary feelings of humanity.”
When the next Sabbath comes, you meet that same bystander in the house of Grod. Around you are a large company of travellers to eternity. Some of them are ignorant. Some of them are careless and indifferent. A large portion of them are enemies of Grod, with the whetted sword of Ahnighty wrath aheady hanging over them. As the minister of Christ casts his eye over his audience, he sees many who are utterly “without hope,” and if death were suddenly to overtake them, he knows that they must sink to eternal darkness, and the undying worm. Even to-morrow some of those hearers may be wrapped in their shrouds, and their souls be in another world!
Weighed down with the tremendous responsibility that rests upon him, the herald of the cross proclaims his message, with strong cryings and tears. Every argument that could be drawn from thundering Sinai or darkened Calvary, from an open heaven or a yawning hell, is presented from a soul breaking with solicitude for dying men. And when the message of love lias been delivered, and the minister of Christ has returned to his closet, to mourn there that he did not plead his Master’s cause yet more earnestly, where are his auditors? How many heard his message? How many gave heed to it? How many remembered it until they reached their own dwellings? Well will it be if some did not retire to mock and sneer at it all as the efPasion of crazy enthusiasm, or a fanatical bigotry. The modern Festus, who applauded the eloquent advocate in the court-room, pronounces this man “mad;” and even many a frigid professor thinks that the worthy preacher was somewhat “beside himself,” from the ardor of his emotion.
If such painful contrasts sink the souls of God’s ministers here into sorrow, and well nigh to despair, how must they appear to those who behold them from another world! How they must appear to a saint in bliss, or to a lost soul in the world of woe I