TWO OTHER REASONS WHY GOD CALLS CHILDREN TO REMEMBER HIM AND SEEK HIM EARLY

First, there is an awful probability that if people do not come to Jesus for salvation in early life they will never come at all. This fact is pressed upon our attention, and comes from so many different sources, that it fills us with a longing that is almost painful to save the children. God says: "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near." God is never so near an unconverted life as in childhood. Wordsworth says: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." Tom Hood sings most pathetically:

"I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky.
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To think I 'm not so near to heaven
As when I was a boy.'

Multitudes can give the same sad testimony that they are consciously farther from heaven and God than they were in childhood. They know they are drifting out into a wide sea of sin; and God teaches that there is a limit beyond which if they go they will never get back. They become hopelessly deaf to all God's pleadings, hopelessly blind to self-interest. They have less and less love for heaven, and less and less relish for holiness, until all desire to be saved is gone, and they are finally abandoned to a life of sin.

It is a mournful fact that most of the people who are drunkards today are going to Eve drunkards and die drunkards, and go to a drunkard's hell in spite of us. We build and open churches, but most of these people will not come to the churches; they prefer to go to the saloons. We hold meetings for their salvation; but they will not conic to the meetings. With here and there an exception they prefer to meet their fellow-revelers in the saloon, and they will meet them in spite of pleadings and entreaties and prayers until they die in the gutter as the fool dieth.

Occasionally we see a gambler turn from his sin and give his heart to Jesus; but it is very seldom. Most of those who are gamblers today are wedded to their sin, and will not forsake it. In vain do parents entreat and wives plead and brothers warn. In vain are all the alarms and threatened judgments of God sounded in their ears. In vain do comrades sink in irretrievable ruin before their eyes. They are snared in the meshes of a fatal vice. They love the chains that bind them. They fairly run with infatuated zeal unto their eternal doom.

And so it is with other sins. Most of those who are blasphemers today are going to live so and die so in spite of the warnings of Almighty God. And the liars and the knaves and the impure are following hard after them, deaf to every voice of mercy and love that would win them from their sins unto a better life. A few of these sinners now and then are saved, enough to inspire hope and keep us at work for their rescue. But the majority of them, in spite of the Bible and churches and sermons and prayers and every conceivable means of grace, are sweeping on, a laughing, mocking, jeering throng, to a lost eternity. We wish from the depths of our hearts that it were not so; but we can not blind our eyes to the sad, awful fact that it is so. That proves to us that if children would make sure of heaven they must seek God in early life. -- "Call upon him while he may be found."

The writer came to Jesus when a child eleven years old, and to that fact is due everything of worth in his after life. He sat down some years ago in Michigan and thought over some of his boyhood companions, and their end. What a record of ruined life it was, -- all because they had not committed themselves to the loving watch-care of Jesus. F. M____ was shot dead in a saloon. F. B____ became a drunkard and committed suicide. Another F. M_____ went to a State's prison for stealing. G. S____ in my Sabbath-school class died a drunkard, frozen to death in a snow-bank. C. D_____ was shot for deserting from the army. A. J_____ became demented because of vice. N. W____ fled from the State a fugitive because of sin. J. S____ became a gambler. N. C____ became a drunkard, ruined his home, deserted his wife, and was found dead in his hotel room. It was supposed he died a suicide, and his mother died of a broken heart. How different would their lives have been had they all given themselves to Jesus when they were boys! The lesson for the boys and girls from all these sad instances is this, -- seek Jesus and give your hearts to him and become sincere Christians while you are young, before the sad days come when the probability is that you will never come at all.

The fifth and last reason I will mention why you should come to Christ in early life is that by doing so you will have so much more usefulness. I presume if ten old men and women sixty years of age should come to Christ in a religious service people would weep for joy, and think that the cause of Christ had gained a great deal. But if ten boys and girls ten years old should come to Christ in a meeting many would think that it amounted to very little. But it is my opinion that if heaven is ever especially jubilant it is when the children come to Christ. I will make it plain why it is so. Suppose the ten old men and women should all live to be seventy years old. Then they would have ten years apiece for the service of Christ. But they are so old now, and have wasted so much of life, and formed so many bad habits, that they could render only feeble service for the Master. But the ten boys and girls, now only ten years old, if they lived to be seventy, would have sixty years apiece for the service of Jesus -- in all, six hundred years. And they are beginning so young that Jesus would get the strength of their whole life. They could get a Christian education and become authors, editors, teachers, leaders in business, ministers, missionaries. Only Cod can tell how great their influence might be. It might circle the world and bless all mankind.

A minister once related to me the following: "I was brought up in Toronto, Canada. When a boy, I attended revival meetings. One night ten of us boys sat in a row. The preacher asked all of us who would accept Christ to arise. Nine of us arose and accepted Christ. Five of the nine are now ministers; three others are noble Christian workers and Sabbath-school teachers, and the ninth is an honorable and useful Christian man. We all grew to manhood. That tenth one who did not accept Christ was taken fatally sick. I went to see him. He looked at me with sad, dying eyes and said: ' 'O Harry, I ought to have come to Christ when you and the other boys did, but I didn't, and now I 'ye got to die and I 'm lost, I 'm lost.' It was so awful that I couldn't endure it, and I put on my hat and coat and left the house; but fainter and fainter, as I went down the street, I could hear the poor fellow's dying wail: 'I'm lost, I'm lost.'" Now, wouldn't it have been better if he had come to Christ with the other boys?

In the early part of this century a faithful Scotch minister, coming early to the kirk (church), met one of his deacons, whose face wore a resolute but distressed look. "I have come early to meet you," said the deacon, "and say to you, pastor, that there must be something radically wrong in your preaching and work. There has been only one person added to the church in a whole year, and he is only a boy." (Just as if it did not amount to anything to have a boy join the church!) The old minister listened. His eyes moistened with tears and his thin hand trembled. "I feel it all," he said, "I feel it all; but God knows that I have tried to do my best, and I can trust him for results."

The old minister stood up to preach that day with a grieved and heavy heart. He closed his discourse with dim and tearful eyes He wished that his work was done forever, and that he was at rest among the graves in the old kirk-yard. He lingered after service to shed his tears of sorrow alone before the altar where he had prayed over the dead of a by-gone generation. No one noticed the pastor's grief hut the boy, Robert. He watched the old man trembling in his sorrow, and then went up to him and said, as he laid his hand on the old man's gown: "Do you think if I were willing to work hard for an education I could ever become a preacher?" "A preacher?" "Yes," said the boy, "and perhaps a missionary." There was a long pause. Tears again filled the eyes of the aged man of God. At length he said: "This heals the ache in my heart, Robert. I see the Divine hand now. May God bless you, my boy. Yes, I think you will become a preacher."

More than half a century afterward there returned to London from Africa an aged missionary. His name was spoken with reverence. When he went into an assembly the audience rose to their feet to greet him, and stood till he was seated; when he spoke in public there was deep silence. Princes stood with uncovered heads before him; nobles invited him to their homes. He had added a new province to the church of Christ, and to Christian civilization. He had brought' under gospel influences the most savage of African chiefs; had given the translated Bible to strange tribes; had enriched with valuable knowledge the Royal Geographical Society, and had honored the country of his birth, and the universal missionary cause. The old pastor had not labored in vain. The conversion of a thousand old men would not have been such a gain to the kingdom of Christ as the conversion of that boy. His name was Robert Moffat -- a name now immortal among men,

Bishop McCabe came to Christ when he was eight years old, as we have already said. Suppose. he had waited until he was sixty before giving his heart to God! The M. E. Church would have lost one of its great men. Dwight L. Moody gave himself to Christ when he was a raw, untutored boy. At the time it probably did not seem much to many people that such a convert was made; but, no doubt, in the eyes of God it was one of the grandest trophies of grace, and meant more to the world than the conversion of a king. Had he waited until fifty or sixty years of age, he would never have been heard of. As it was, he has become one of the grandest Christian men of the century.

O, boys and girls, God wants you to come to him in early life, because he wants you to become grandly useful. Seek him now, and fill your life with a usefulness that will be your joy and glory in eternity.

 QUESTIONS

1. Are people likely to come to Jesus at all if they do not come in early life?
2. When does the poet say heaven is near us?
3. When does another poet say it is far off?
4. Are many drunkards saved?
5. Are gamblers often converted?
6. Are other sinners usually saved in old age?
7. Did the early friends of the writer who rejected Christ have an honorable end?
8. What is the last reason given why we should come to Christ in early life?
9. 9. Which would have the greater usefulness, ten persons converted in childhood or ten converted in old age?
10. What about the nine boys who gave their hearts to Christ one night in Toronto?
11. What was the end of the one who didn't?
12. What can you say of Robert?
13. What can you say of Bishop McCabe?
14. What can you say about D. L. Moody?

Song: "Whiter than Snow."