How Shall I Approach God? by Horatius Bonar

Author:Horatius Bonar
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Chapel Library
Published: 2014-02-05T07:00:00+00:00

Whither? Whither?

IN THE beginning of the eighteenth century, an old American Christian died, leaving on his death-bed this message to his son—“Remember that there is a LONG ETERNITY.”

But this was not all. He laid upon his family the dying command, that the same message should be handed down to the next generation, and from that to the next again, as long as any of his posterity remained. The command was obeyed. One generation after another received the solemn message, “Remember there is a LONG ETERNITY.” And the words, we are told, bore fruit in the conversion of children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

It is of this long eternity that God so often speaks to us in His book, with the words “everlasting,” “without end,” “forever and forever.” It is of this long eternity that each death-bed speaks to us—each shroud, each coffin, each grave. It is of this long eternity that each closing and opening year speaks to us, pointing forward to the endless years which lie beyond the brief days of time—brief days which are hurrying us without slackening to the life or to the death which must be the issue of all things on earth. Of that eternity we may say that its years shall be as many as the leaves of the forest, or as the sands of the seashore, or as the drops of the ocean, or as the stars of heaven, or as the blades of grass, or as the sparkles of dew, all multiplied together. And who can reckon up these numbers, or conceive the prodigious sum—millions upon millions of ages.

A traveller, some years ago, tells that in the room of a hotel where he lodged there was hung a large printed sheet, with these solemn words—

“Know these things, O Man—A GOD, a Moment, an Eternity.”

Surely it would be our wisdom to think on words like these—so brief, yet so full of meaning.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691) mentions the case of a minister of his day, the whole tone of whose life-preaching was affected by the words which he heard when visiting a dying woman, who “often and vehemently” (he says) “did cry out” on her death-bed, “Oh, call time back again, call time back again!” But the calling of time back again is as hopeless as the shortening of eternity. “This inch of hasty time,” as that noble preacher calls it, cannot be lengthened out; and if not improved or redeemed, is lost forever. While God lives, the soul must live; for “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Act 17:28).

Our eternal future is no dream nor fable. It will be as real as our past has been—nay, more so. Unbelief may try to persuade us that it is a shadow or a fancy. But it is not. It is infinitely and unutterably real; and the ages before us, as they come and go, will bring with them realities in comparison with which all past realities will be as nothing. All things pertaining

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