MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS,—We propose to keep a corner in this magazine especially for you, and we make this announcement that you may be on the look-out for your own special letters, etc. We are also hopeful that some grown-up friends of yours may see from this that an opportunity is afforded them of writing to you.
Some of you will remember the first time you received a letter, and your excitement at opening it. Probably you will not be quite so excited about our letters, because you will not find yourselves mentioned by name, and moreover you may not know the writer. Still you will begin to see that more people take an interest in you than you are aware, and that they are evidently often thinking of you and your welfare. If you find that you like their letters, we think that in the end you will be better pleased that they are open for everybody to read.
Talking about letters, perhaps it has never occurred to you that the Bible is full of letters addressed to all sorts of people, and that in this respect it resembles a Post Office. We should come off very badly however, if we had a Post Office -without a postmaster or postmen, shouldn't we?
Imagine everyone running down to the Post Office and helping themselves to letters; some people, who could not read, taking the first that came whether addressed to them or not! Now God has made provision that the letters He has addressed should reach their proper destination, and He has His postmen too. As the every-day postman is looked for eagerly, so of God's postmen He says, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings."
You and I, as young people, may often have thought what a wonderful person the postman is; and it is only when we get older we learn that he is by no means the most remarkable person connected with the Post Office. He only does what he is told, and he must be very careful to obey. He, however, happens to be the person we see most of.
As we grow older we discover that the more wonderful person is one whom we have probably never seen,—the Postmaster General. He, with all his great army of workers, hidden away from the public view, is ever busy thinking out and planning and arranging that the letters may get to their right destinations. So that you see the daily postman's part is really a very modest one.
Now God has entrusted His letters to none other than God the Holy Ghost, and He it is Who directs His servants to the doors of people's hearts with God's word. Now this brings us to a very serious consideration, It is quite possible to refuse to receive a letter addressed to one—not even to listen to it. Someone omitted to stamp a letter to a gentleman whom the writer knows; this so annoyed him that he refused to take it in, and all the while there was a check inside for a large sum of money. It would have been more sensible to pocket his annoyance and the check at the same time, and cheerfully to pay the two penny fine, would it not?
To bring this home however, somebody perhaps spoke to you about your soul before others, and this annoyed you, and so you wouldn't even listen, although they were speaking the words of eternal life, which no check in the world could buy.
Again, some people receive a letter, read it and put it aside, intending to answer it at a more convenient season. It may be a letter that requires an answer immediately, and they find out when too late that an invitation given was for a day which they carelessly allowed to slip by.
Now let us see if you can be wise about these things and look at the words addressed to you in these columns from time to time, in a little different light A postman, although he may be only a very ordinary individual, when wearing the Queen's uniform, is a person no one can afford to despise as the uniform tells us that he is doing the Queen's work. Now, my dear young friends, the remarks that will appear here from time to time are written by ordinary folk, not naturally different from any one else; but they serve the King of Kings, and just as we who are old enough to understand should pay great attention to a letter headed "On Her Majesty's Service," so should you heed the word of God when brought to you by a servant of His.
Fancy any one being so silly as to refuse an invitation from the Queen, because they didn't like the postman who brought the letter. And yet grown-up people have often no better excuse to offer for refusing to listen to God's invitation!