The Revealer Revealed by W. Hay Aitken

Oh, pause and look into the mirror again tonight, dear souls! Do you not see how the deadly leprosy is spreading over “your natural face”?—how the fatal disease is running its course, mutilating, disfiguring, destroying all that it touches? What manner of man are you? I will tell you plainly. You are one who is trifling away the interests of his soul, who is rendering it more and more difficult for that which he hears to produce any impression, even the slightest, upon his conscience; you are educating yourself in forgetfulness, and you are courting a curse in your deeds when you might have inherited a blessing.

Take care, take care! I pray you, lest this forgetfulness become at last a habit of your soul, so settled and confirmed, that you shall be unable to shake it off. Take care lest you live and die a hearer only—a forgetful hearer—and then wake up at last to an agony of remembrance. “Son, remember.” Remember that the mirror was held op before thine eyes, and thou didst dash it away; remember that the perfect law of liberty was proclaimed in thine ear, and thou wouldst not hear it; remember that thou wast offered freedom, but thou didst elect to be a slave; thou wast offered a life of blessed activity, and thou didst elect to bring upon thyself the curse; the life thou mightest have lived is lost, the salvation thou mightest have enjoyed is forfeited—remember! remember! and in that memory find the very pains of hell!

Thou hast lost thy education-time; thou are not free for the blessed activities of heaven. Thy earthly work was never commenced; there is nothing that thou couldst do in heaven. Thou hast heard to no purpose; thou shalt hear no more. Take thy place among those “who go down into silence.”

God save you from the doom of the hearer only! Oh, brethren, gaze into the mirror this very day until you too discover what manner of men the same power of grace can cause you to be, and looking into the perfect law of liberty, and continuing therein, you go forth to a life of blessed action; and when this world passes away, you have to thank God that you too have been blessed in your deed!