“ISN’T this a perfect day!” said a lady to a friend. “Isn’t this a perfect day! I should like to order a carriage and pair, and go for a good drive,” she added, merrily.
The lady who spoke was young, and only recently married, and life seemed opening brightly before her, with many fair prospects for the future. And so, as she gazed from the window this lovely summer’s morning, where everything looked so beautiful in the golden sunshine, and she herself rejoicing in her newly found joy, it drew forth from her the exclamation, “Isn’t this a perfect day!”
“Perfect,” did she say? Ah, here was her mistake, for she had forgotten one awfully solemn fact, that “sin had entered into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. 5:1212Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:12)). Truly when God created the earth all was perfect then. All was for His glory; and as the Creator looked on His own handiwork He could pronounce that “it was very good.” But a sad history followed, for sin came in and spoiled all; and so “death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:1212Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:12)).
And try as we may, we cannot disguise the fact that death is here on all hands. Do we not see signs of it everywhere? The flowers bloom and die, the sweet song of the bird is soon hushed in death, and the trees of the forest all in their turn decay and die; and how often in our very homes we find death removing our dear ones! The Psalmist described his path through life as like walking through “the valley of the shadow of death” (Psa. 23:44Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4)).
And so it happened that barely an hour had passed since the above words had escaped the lady’s lips, when she received a telegram summoning her to the bed-side of a dying mother. A cab was called, and so she had her drive, — not to seek fresh pleasures in this sorrow and death-stricken scene, but to take her to a spot now silenced by the presence of death.
Reader, are your joys all down here in this world? Are all your pleasures belonging to this life, where death may come and rob you of the very thing you most cherish? or do you know anything of those “pleasures forevermore,” and that “fullness of joy” to be found Where Christ is, and where death cannot enter?
Paul rejoiced in possessing what nothing could ever take from him, for he says, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38, 3938For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38‑39)). E. R. M.