WEDNESDAY EVENING DEVOTION

Let others hold their peace about Hell if they will; I dare not do so. I see it plainly in Scripture, and I must speak of it. I fear that thousands are on that broad road that leads to it, and I would fain arouse them to a sense of the peril before them.

What would you say of the man who saw his neighbor’s house in danger of being burned down and never raised the cry of “fire”? Call it bad taste if you like to speak of Hell. Call it charity to make things pleasant and speak smoothly and soothe men with a constant lullaby of peace.

From such notions of taste and charity may I ever be delivered! My notion of charity is to warn men plainly of their danger. My notion of taste is to declare all the counsel of God. If I never spoke of Hell, I should think I had kept back something that was profitable and should look on myself as an accomplice of the Devil.

Beware of new and strange doctrines about Hell and the eternity of punishment. Beware of manufacturing a god of your own—a god who is all love but not holy, a god who has a heaven for everybody but a hell for none, a god who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time and will make no distinction between good and bad in eternity.

Such a god is an idol of your own, as really as Jupiter or the monstrous image of Juggernaut—as true an idol as was ever molded out of brass or clay.

The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God toe the Bible, and besides the God of the Bible there is no God at all.

Your “heaven” would be no Heaven at all. A heaven containing all sorts of characters mixed together indiscriminately would be miserable discord indeed. Alas for the eternity of such a heaven! There would be little difference between it and Hell.

Ah, reader, there is a Hell! Take heed lest you find it out too late.

Beware of being wise above that which is written. Beware of forming fanciful theories of your own and then trying to make the Bible square with them. Beware of making selections from your Bible to suit your taste—refusing like a spoiled child, whatever you think is bitter; seizing, like a spoiled child, whatever you think sweet.

What is all this but taking Jehoiakim’s penknife and cutting God’s word to pieces? What does it amount to but telling God that you, a poor, short-lived worm, know what is good for you better than He? It will not do; it will not do. You must take the Bible as it is. You must read it all and believe it all. You must come to the reading of it in the spirit of a little child.

Dare not to say, “I believe this verse, for I like it; I receive this, for I can understand it; I refuse that, for I cannot reconcile it with my views.”

“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” (Romans 9:20). By what right do you talk in this way? Surely it were better to say over every chapter in the word, “Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth” (1 Samuel 3:9).

Ah, reader, if men were to do this, they would never try to throw overboard the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the wicked.

“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:46).

- J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)

Choose yourself as to which is the best time. Perhaps it is better to put off this matter of religion for ten years. If so, drop the whole subject now. Just as a judge in court sets down a trial for three months ahead and does not bother himself about the trial for three months ahead and does not bother himself about the trial until that day comes, so set down a day for your conversion ten years from now. If you can keep the world all these ten years and at the close of that time can take Christ, will it not be better to take Him now? Decided, then, let it be that ten yours from now you will attend to it.

Or, if you be in robust health and your prospects are very fair, then put it off twenty years. But I hear someone say: “How if an accident should take me off before that? How if I should lose my reason before that? How if my day of grace should end before that? How if the Holy Spirit should leave my soul before that? How if the avalanche of my transgressions should crush me before that? How if I should life my eyes in Hell before that?

Oh, I see the point you make. You mean to say: “I think that it may be now or never.” I think you mean to say that of a million souls lost, 999,999 are lost through procrastination.

- T. DeWitt Talmage

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