“For we are sojourners, as were all our fathers.”—Bible.
Thecars were crowded. In one corner sat the grey-haired grandfather; by his side, the gay, thoughtless maiden; farther on, the youthful aspirant after the world’s honors; and at his elbow, the stern, thinking business man, intently engaged in reading the morning’s Prices Current, thinking only of Profit and Loss, and the rise and fall of articles for which he trafficked, forgetting, not thealmighty dollar, but hisimmortal soul.
We started. On and on the fire-breathing iron horse drew us along:—now hurrying around the sweeping curves; now ascending some steep acclivity; now rattling through dark, dungeon-like tunnels; anon speeding with almost lightning rapidity over the smoothly laid track.
None seemed to fear. All was happiness and joy. One was thinking of the joyful welcome that awaited him at his happy home; anotherof the pleasure he expected to meet with from the friends of his childhood, from whom he had been separated many a long year; others were perfectly indifferent—no trouble to cloud their brows, no care to harass their hearts—gazing, with countenances of delight, on the fair fields of nature which stretched out before them, the mirror-like lake, or the cloud-capped mountain that lifted its proud head far above the bustle and confusion of the world.
None thought of danger. None thought that the next moment might find them a mass of bruised and mangled corpses, or struggling for life amid the waves of some roaring river. The engineer was at his post; the conductor would see that no harm should befall them.
My young friends, as I sat in that crowded car, many were the thoughts that rose in my mind. I thought this life was but a railroad; we the passengers. Some of us are thoughtful and considerate; many gay and inconsiderate. The railroad of life has many curves, to avoid the current of sin, or the pit of destruction; many a high acclivity of difficulty; many a dark, lonely tunnel of doubt and uncertainty; many a deep cut of affliction, from which the light of God’s countenance seems entirely withdrawn.The route lies along the flower-dressed meadows of happiness, and through the dark, dismal morasses of poverty and want. At one moment all is beauty, loveliness and grandeur; at another, the clouds of God’s wrath gather thick and heavy around us. Some of us are journeying to our heavenly home; others, far from that home, in search of what the world calls enjoyment, but, like the apples of Sodom, bitterness and remorse.
My young friends, if Christ be our engineer and God our conductor, we need fear no evil. All will be well; our journey safe and pleasant: and we shall safely reach a glorious home in Heaven, and there spend an eternity of blissful happiness in the company of the loved and lost who have traveled this road, and reached, without any collision or accident, its termination.