Part 6

But how soon God may call that soul back to Himself, away from the body, where it lives now, who can tell?

I am just now thinking of some young voyagers whose passage from time to eternity was indeed short, but the story is so sad that I could not tell you about it if I did not remember what the Lord Jesus once said, when He was teaching His disciples. He called a little child to Him, and began to speak to them about such little children, and one of the things which He said was this, "The Son of man is come to save that which was lost" (Matt. xviii. 11). And again He said (you will find this verse in the same chapter), "It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."

Since even the very little children have gone astray from God, so that the Lord Jesus spoke of them as "lost" and "perishing," how could I tell you this story, if the Lord from heaven, He who called Himself the "Son of man" when He was here in this world, had not come to save that which was lost?

This is the sad, true story:

It was on a beautiful Monday morning, in the bright June weather, that the scholars belonging to a large Sunday-school in Ireland were travelling with their teachers and friends from the town where they lived to spend the day at a lovely place by the seaside. How proud and happy they were, all these boys and girls, as they marched through the town waving their flags and singing, and how much they had to say about the grand time they were going to have! You may be sure they liked a long holiday out of doors, with games and races, and buns and oranges, as much as you do, and so they got into the train in high glee.

But that train never reached the lovely place at the seaside. Before it had gone very far on its way there was a dreadful accident; some of the carriages were crushed and broken, as if they had been matchboxes, and many of those bright boys and girls were killed all in a moment--the short voyage of their life was over; oh, how soon! By-and-by some doctors came hurrying to the place where the ruined train lay, and began to look about to find those who might not be dead, only hurt. It was a sad sight they saw, and one they can never forget. While they were busy, giving help here and there, someone noticed two little ones, sitting on the green bank, beside the wreck of the train. A doctor went up to see if they were hurt. No, they were picking the daisies which grew among the grass; they were too young to understand what a dreadful thing had happened.

"Were you in the train, my dears?" said the kind doctor.

"Yes," said a little girl of six years old, "we were in the train, and she was too," and she pointed to where another child lay quite still upon the grass; not picking daisies--no, she could not speak or move, she was dead.

Put your finger on your wrist, and keep very still for a moment. Listen. You feel something, do you not? Something alive, and it goes beat, beat; one, two, three, like the ticking of a watch. As long as you live, that tick, tick will go on; but for this little girl it had stopped, because her heart had ceased to beat. When the doctor put his hand upon her wrist, he could feel nothing moving there. "She is quite dead," he said, as he took her body up from the grass that it might be carried back to her home, the home which she had left that morning, so happy and gay.

At the Sunday-school these children had been taught about the "wondrous, glorious Saviour," of whom you sometimes sing, and we may believe that the spirit of this dear child, redeemed to God by the precious blood of Christ, went straight from that wrecked train to spend its long for ever with the One who had loved her and given Himself for her; and that God, who takes care of the poor little body which was laid low in the grave with many a sad tear, will raise it in glory, one day, when "death is swallowed up in victory."

But there were not only very little children in that wrecked train. We are told of a boy who was terribly hurt, but lived an hour after the crash came. As he lay by the wayside, a young girl with a pitiful heart came and knelt beside him.

"I will pray you up to heaven," she whispered.

"I am going there!" said the dying boy; "Lord Jesus take me, I am ready."

Of another his poor mother said--

"I asked him before he started--'Well, dear, have you committed yourself to your heavenly Father?' 'Yes, mother, I have,' he said. So I gave him my blessing and sent him off, and that was the last time I ever saw him alive."

These boys did not think as they left their homes that morning that they would never return, but they had learned to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their own Saviour, and so when danger and death came, they were ready to leave this world and go to Him: their boats were not wrecked; they sailed right into port.

And now that we are coming to the end of our lesson for to-day, let us "think back," and see if we can remember what it is all about, and then we will mark the subjects (a), (b), (c), (d), to help us to keep them in mind.

The subjects were--

(a) That very far away time which God speaks of as "the beginning."

(b) It is God alone who can tell us about this time.

(c) God, who made all that has a beginning, Himself had no beginning. This means that there never was a time, no matter how long ago, when God was not. If you think back, back, even to the time when there was no sky, no earth, no great ocean, you can never come to a time when there was no God.

(d) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God." The "Word" is one of the names of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to this world that He might show us how very much God His Father loves us, and who could say, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

For He who was once born a little child in this world and laid in the manger at Bethlehem, and who grew up in the home of Joseph and Mary at Nazareth, is the Same who was "in the beginning with God," for He "was God."

This is what God has told us about His great Eternity, when Time, with its days and weeks and months and years, had not begun.

"TIME AND ETERNITY.

"How long sometimes a day appears! And weeks, how long are they! Months move as slow as if the years Would never pass away.

"It seems a long, long time ago That I was taught to read; And since I was a babe, I know 'Tis very long indeed.

"Days, months, and years are passing by, And soon will all be gone; And day by day, as minutes fly, Eternity comes on.