The Unawakened

Unawakened I Alas, 0 sinner! unless
thou be awakened, thou must perish I

Not long ago, a house containing many inmates was burned down at night. Several persons perished in the flames. Would you know the reason? They were awakened too late. So the finally impenitent sinner will awake; but too late I Those are dreadful words, even in some earthly conjunctures. Too LATE I TOO LATE! You Stand by the brink of a deep and rapid river, and see a youth fall into its waters. He sinks, struggling, and then rises. Boats put out; gallant fellows pull to his rescue; they seize his tangled hair as he rises once more, and bear his drenched and flaccid body to the bank. It is too late I The breath of life has fled. So in many conceivable instances of earthly peril, in some of which the perishing creature,

a suicide for example, awakes to the direful truth of his catastrophe; but awakes too late! Sinner, you will assuredly awake, either in time or in eternity.

Sooner or later, a man’s sins find him out.“^ Perhaps in temporal disgrace and retribution. Perhaps at the hour of death. Beyond all peradventure at the bar of God. The rich man was not awakened in his pui-ple and fine linen. In his lifetime he received his good things; but “in hell he lifb up his eyes, being in torments.” He was then fully awake. Can you endure the thought of being aroused by your sins, where no pardons are vouchsafed?

“There are no acta of pardon past In the cold grave to which we haste; But darkness, death, and long despair Reign in eternal silence there.”

“It is high time to awake out of sleep.” These words are as applicable to this case, as to that intended by the Apostle. Oh I for a trumpet-blast, loud enough to startle the careless reader of these words into a salutary fear of death, judgment and eternal wrath! You

1 Num. 32: 23.

walk on the brink of a precipice, and God’s holiness, justice, and truth are all against jou. Yet it is your offended Judge who continues to pursue jou with the cry: “Behold, now is the accepted time: behold now is the day of salvation.“^ The time is auspicious. It is God’s time. “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”^ To-morrow has no promises. To-morrow you may be in eternity. Death has surprised thousands at the very time when they were procrastinating, repentance. The foolish virgins were not awakened till they heard the midnight cry: “Behold, the bridegroom cometh!” The voice of the archangel and the trump of God will wake every sleeper, for “all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”^ Is it not astonishing that you can hear such things from the lips of Him who so loved the world as to die for it, and that you should still remain unmoved?

Be convinced, careless reader, that there is

1 2 Cor. 6:2. 2 Psalra 95: 8. 3 John 5: 28, 29.

nothing so unreasonable as to remain unawakened, when called by Almighty God. Awakening truths come near on every side, sounding from heaven, earth, and hell. There are cases in which fear is unreasonable, but this is not one of them. No man can rationally despise the “wrath of the Lamb.” He who dies in his sins, dies in rejection of the only sacrifice for sin. The dread of so dying ought to take hold of your heart while you read. Those terrible denunciations against sinners, from which they turn away, lest conscience should be shaken from its slumber, proceed not from the mouth of a harsh, malignant being, but from the meek and lowly Jesus, who weeps over lost souls. It ought to prove a pungent consideration that of all the expressions which Scripture contains concerning everlasting wo, the most fearful are those which fell from the gentle lips of Jesus. A little searching of the sacred volume will show this to be true. The Redeemer spake these threatenings in love, and the thought of this should break the dream of indolent security. Christ’s terrors are meant to alarm you out of your sins and your false confidence, and so to make way fr His tender mercies. But

Lis mercies are exhibited to the unreconciled only in the present life; and your tenure of human existence, fellow-sinner, is very slight and precarious.

To remain unawakened is madness itself, unless the Omniscient can be evaded, and the Omnipotent set at nought. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”^ Beware, lest God, long put off and thrust aside, swear in his wrath that you shall not enter into his rest. The downfall of the secure is sometimes precipitous. “He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” This hardening is produced by a continued process of .hearing God’s call without heeding it. How knowest thou, 0 sinner! but that the sentence hath already gone forth against thee: “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” There is a point at which Mercy, after many pleadings for the impenitent soul, stands aside and suffers Justice to take its course. Continued and obdurate resistance to the blood of the Lord Jesus, is no venial sin in

1 Gal. G: ‘7.

the sight of God. Thej who reject this Mediator need look for no other. “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” That measure of concern for sin, of which you are conscious while you read these words, is caused by the Spirit of God. Take heed how you trifle with this monition. The sacred fire within may, by your neglect or transgression, have been reduced to a single coal; a single beam of light touching your ruined state may glimmer within. “Quench not the Spirit.” There are critical moments in every biography; instants on which are suspended heaven and hell. Every lost soul has had a dast call. There is a possibility that this is yours.. Therefore resist not the Holy Ghost.^ How awful the moment in which an immortal spirit is left of God I The victim of impenitent procrastination may be as little aware of his doom, as was Samson when “he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.” What though no cloud of holy angels be seen with averted faces slowly to return from their watch

1 Acts (f: 51.

beside the sinner? What though no muttering thunder rolls its portentous signal of wo along the horizon? What though no gigantic scales, held out from high heaven, bear the inscription: “Mene, thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.” The deed is nevertheless done; the book of divine offers is closed; the last whisper of gospel persuasion has died awaj. For some, this epoch coincides with the instant of dying.- WTio shall say, that for others it may not fall in with some earher moment of life? The very hint of such a possibility might well electrify the stupid heart. Do not say there ’ need be no haste, but go, 0 lingerer! to thy knees I and, bewaiHng thy impenitent mind, yield thyself to God.

To be unawakened, is the more sinful and hazardous, at a time like this, when the community is moved, even the heart of the people, “as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.” Is the Great King among us, of a truth? Then is it time for every living soul to be up and doing. Think you the blind, the halt, the maimed, the palsied and the leprous lay asleep, when the Son of David was passing through the highways of

Galilee and Judea on his errands of mercy? As little should the ungodly be sunk in apathy when the Lord, by His Spirit, is putting forth awakening energy in our churches. He who slumbers through such shikings, dishonors God and endangers his own soul. To go untouched through an extensive revival of religion, is to be distinguished in a fearful way. Thus we have seen the tall “trunk blackened and scathed by lightning, rearing itself among the trees of the forest. Is it your case, dear reader? You have listened cold and hard to the “Word of God, which has been to others “as a fire, and like a hammer, that breaketh the rock in pieces.”^ You have been present during devotions, in which the hearts of believers have flowed like molten gold. You have been singled out for the prayers of the church; but you have wrought mightily against those prayers, by your hard and impenitent heart. If you perish after all, it will not be by the common lot of the lost.

Consent to meditate, to consider, and to return. Our hope of this result leads us to ad-

1 Jer. 23: 29.

dress even the hardened: “If perad venture God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may awake themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive bj him at his

There is a time, we know not when,
A point, we know not where.

That marks the destiny of men
To glory or despah-.

There is a hne, by us unseen,

That crosses every path;
The hidden boundary between

God’s patience and his wrath.

To pass that limit is to die,

To die as if by stealth;
It does not quench the beaming eye,

Or pale the glow of health.

The conscience may be still at ease,

The spirits light and gay; That which is pleasing still may please,

And care be thrust away.

But on that forehead God has set,

Indehbly, a mark,
Unseen by man, for man as yet

Is blind and in the dark.

1 2 Tim. 2: 26, margin.
55

And yet the doomed man’s path below,
Like Eden, may have bloomed;

He did not, does not, will not know
Or feel that he is doomed.

Ho knows, he feels, that all is well,

And every fear is calmed:
He Uves, he dies, he wakes in hell,

Not only doomed, but damned.

Oh 1 where is this mysterious bourae, By which our path is crossed;

Beyond which God himself hath sworn
That he who goes is lost?

How fivr may we go on in sin?

How long will God forbear? Where does hope end? and where begin

The confines of despair?

An answer from the skies is sent:
“Ye that from God depart!
While it is called to-day, repent I
And harden not your heart”