| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 35 |
Page 5 |
Heaven must be filled. If those who are first invited will not come, the invitation is extended to others and pressed upon them. “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in,” was the bidding. These words show us the importance of earnestness in those whose duty it is to invite men to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are not merely to find Christ ourselves, and then be satisfied. The first impulse of the true Christian is to seek other lost ones. The words of the parable suggest, first, that we are to go into all the world, wherever there is a lost soul, and invite all men to come. We are to invite them earnestly, to constrain them, to press the invitation upon them. The morning papers the other day told of a policeman rushing into a burning building, climbing the stairways, through flame and smoke, to save a mother and her children. We should have similar earnestness in rescuing perishing souls.
A visitor at the hospice of St. Bernard, in the Alps, tells of one of the noble dogs coming in one morning, holding his head and tail to the ground, and slinking away to a dark corner of his kennel, as if ashamed to look anyone in the face. The monks explained to the visitor that the dog had not been able to find anybody to rescue that morning in the snow, and therefore was ashamed to come in from his search. How will it be with us when we reach the end of our life, if we have not rescued anyone from the storms and the dangers? On the other hand, much of the joy of heaven will come from meeting those whom we have been allowed to bring to Christ. Someone writes:
Perchance in heaven one day to me
Some blessed saint will come, and say,
‘All hail, beloved, but for thee
My soul to death had fallen a prey:’
And oh, what rapture in the thought—
One soul to glory to have brought!
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