ONLY two words, yet intended to be full of bitter meaning by the utterer, a young man who had been brought up in a godly home, and who had knelt at a loving mother's knee, as a child, to repeat his little prayer when the curtain of night had fallen. He had grown up and left his native place to go to the great city,—great in wickedness as well as other things. Like many another young man he had been careless as to the choice of friends, and became an associate with those whose feet were upon the downward path that leadeth to destruction, and he soon followed closely in their footsteps; he shunned the people of God, he joined with the profane and the vile, the drunken and licentious. His letters home were fewer and fewer, and his poor mother's heart was breaking, for she was sure he was not living as she could have wished.
It was a raw cold wintry night, and the wind seemed to cut right through you. At a mission ball some evangelists were holding special services, and outside the hall was a Christian young lady giving to passers-by an invitation to the meetings.
She saw this young man coming along, offered him a bill, and asked whether he would not go in and hear the speaker. He brusquely pushed past her, made no attempt to take that bill, and hissed through his teeth, "Not me.”
He had just left some of his companions in vice, having spent the evening in a gambling den. To meet the constant calls through losses, he had "borrowed” some of the moneys entrusted to him and belonging to his employers, and just as he was spoken to by that lady he was madly trying to choke down some of the true but hard sayings of his conscience.
He turned into a busy thoroughfare, and while crossing the road, busy in mind with the harassing conflicting thoughts referred to, he was knocked down and run over by a heavy dray. A crowd gathered round, and soon he was taken away to the hospital. The pain was so intense that he became delirious, his groans were frightful to hear, but his curses and oaths were awful, filling that ward with language foul and black. Satan had got hold of him with a vengeance, and during that night snatched away his prey and flung it into outer darkness. The last words he ever uttered were “Not me.”
This is a solemn matter to bring to your notice, my reader. Do you happen to be a young man who has left a home where God was worshipped and adored, and are you in danger of choosing companions who would only ruin you, and ready when the question is asked, "Who will serve Christ?" to answer "Not me." Oh, let us beseech you to remember the prayers of that poor widowed mother of yours, to whom you were once as the light of her life. Remember the God of your fathers, and turn not a deaf ear to the pleadings of the Holy Spirit. Christ Jesus died for sinners that by the shedding of His blood you might be brought nigh to the Father. Come to him now.