THE old saying that "familiarity breeds contempt" has once more been strikingly illustrated during the recent eruption of Vesuvius. Not that there was any pressing need for this fresh 'demonstration. Its truth has been only too manifest for centuries in connection with a far graver matter; and one that far more intimately, my reader, concerns you. How often have you treated the Gospel with indifference and contempt? Pause a moment and let your conscience answer.
A volcanic eruption is certainly no child's play. One would have thought that it was just the thing to make a permanent impression on people's minds, and that one such event would be quite sufficient to forbid all idea of living within its reach for a century. But, no; Vesuvius is an every-day matter for the Neapolitans. Hence they give it but little consideration. Let an eye-witness speak. He says: “The disaster of yesterday, when the central market collapsed like a house of cards, has caused anxiety lest other like catastrophes should follow. The neglect which brought about the disaster referred to is chronic here ... .
Again:
“The indifference of a people so bright and quick-witted as are the Neapolitans is amazing. Along the Partenope, that beautiful drive which is the boast of Naples, no attempt at clearance has been made, and the thick dust still lies on the footpaths untouched. Yet nobody appears concerned.”
These words are strangely suggestive. Who is there who does not sometimes feel a certain amount of anxiety when disaster happens to some near relative or friend? When death seizes them with icy grip and flings them out of this life into eternity all unprepared? Ah! then:, even you have felt anxious lest another like catastrophe should happen, and your turn should come, and find you " without Christ, ... . having no hope, and without God in the world." (Eph. 2:1212That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: (Ephesians 2:12).)
Time and again this has happened, and yet swiftly, like a morning cloud, these fears have vanished away, and, perhaps, to-day your attitude towards God and His Gospel is just summed up by the words of the Naples correspondent—" chronic neglect" and "amazing indifference.”
And why is this? Simply because you have been accustomed to the sound of the Gospel all your life. The Gospel visits a South Sea island through the labors of self-denying men, and many a dusky Polynesian cannibal is turned to God—the whole man is transformed, and his very face shines with a new-found joy and deliverance. You have heard it a hundred times, and received not an atom of benefit.
Oh! friend, forgive my telling you plainly that you are being most grievously blinded and duped by the devil. He will swamp your mind in business, or pleasure, or anything else that will keep you living in fog and dreamland as far as eternal realities are concerned.
Awake! awake!! Put sleep from your eyes! Soon, for each of us, this world of sham and change will be over, and we shall have entered the world where all is real and all is fixed. What about your soul?
Ah! you have not thought much of that. You have never realized its value. And yet, when your body lies mouldering in the dust, your soul will live on, on, on, through an endless future. Then "what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36.)
What of your sins?
These you have conveniently forgotten as far as lies within your power; but this unconcern will not last forever. It cannot, if these words are true: "Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." (Eccl. 11:9.)
But it is because you are indifferent to these things that you neglect the "Good News" of God's grace and of Christ's finished work. And more than this, very likely you have never understood what the Good News really is. What is your idea of the Gospel?
The Naples correspondent whose words I have above quoted also speaks of some who were not altogether indifferent to this visitation of Providence. He says: “Dead women were found kneeling with their beads in their hands. They had evidently found escape impossible, and the only consolation vouchsafed to their friends is the swiftness of the fate which fell upon them. One old lady was found in a confessional box, dead.”
So, strings of beads, and the confessional box were the refuges to which these poor people turned in their hour of need. Bead telling is a question of what I can do, the value of my prayers, or of the value of my confessions if I enter the box. You do not, of course, agree with these poor superstitious folk, but do you agree with the idea which underlies their action, viz., that salvation is a question of human merit, more or less?
If this is so, you do not understand the Gospel.
The very pith and marrow of it is this, that God presents Himself to you as a Giver and a Blesser. He does not ask from you insisting, Give! He offers to you urging, Take! He demands neither prayers nor confessions, nor good works, as though there were any merit in them. No! He brings to you, through the Lord Jesus Christ, forgiveness and life and joy and blessing. The Gospel is:
“God so loved ... . that He gave ... ." (John 3:16.)
and
“Be it known unto you... that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." (Acts 13:38.)
And since God is always a Giver you must be always a receiver if any transaction of blessing is to take place at all.
Why be indifferent to such a Gospel as this? Why treat it with neglect? Ah! did you but know the joy it brings to the believer you would not do so for another hour.
Receive, then, the Lord Jesus Christ. Receiving Him, you receive everything.
“As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name." (John. 1:12.) F. B. H.