The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1881, Page 33

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Che Autheran

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PUBLISHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LurHERAN SynopicaL ConrEeRENcE of Nortu AMERICA.

R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

Entered at the Post Office at St. Louis, Mo., a5 second-class matter.

Vol. III.

St. Louis, Mo., September, 1881.

No. 9.

The Wrong Train.

As I travelled in the express train to Pitts-
burgh, there sat a young man a few seats in
front of me, who seemed to be in a state of
dreamy slumber. The conductor at first passed
him without disturbing his slumber; but at
length, he had to awake him. ‘‘ Your ticket,
sir,’ said he, as he aroused him. The ticket
was shown. ‘‘ Where are you going, sir?’ said
the man of the tickets. ‘‘Going!’’ said the pas-
senger, ‘‘I am going to Chicago.”’ ‘No sir,’’
said the conductor, ‘‘you are in the wrong
train; you are on the way to Pittsburgh.” ‘‘To
Pittsburgh!”’ cried out the traveler, ‘“‘why I got
my ticket and had my baggage checked at Fort
Wayne for Chicago, and when I took my seat
in the cars I thought I was in the right train.”

. ‘But you are in the wrong train and going the
wrong way,’ said the conductor. ‘‘Then,’”
said the young man with an anxious look,
“what must I do?’’? The conductor told him
that all he could do now was to stop at the
next station, just at hand, and ‘‘right about’?
in the next train for Chicago.

As the young man left the cars there came
to my mind what I had read about the ‘‘wrong
train’’ to heaven, and I thought, well, then,
there ts such a thing as a ‘‘wrong train’’; there
is such a thing as going the wrong way, though
some’ men think that on the road to heaven
there is not Two men whose grounds of hope
for another world are exact opposites, can not
both be on the right road, and can not reach
at last the same place of rest. If one is right
the other must be wrong.

A man may take the wrong train, and travel
the wrong way when he fondly thinks he is in
the right, just as that young man thought he
was in the right train. How many throng the
paths of error and the ways of death, and rush
on in the wrong train, saying, ‘‘It is no matter
what a man believes, if he only thinks he is
right! How foolish! The young man’s thinking
he was in the right train did not make it so.
The man who lives on in sins, thinking, ‘Well,
it will all turn out right, there is no way to
hell, God will not be so very strict, He will
take us all into heaven in the end’’—that man
is in the wrong train, no matter what he thinks.

And the man, who trusts in his own holiness,
thinking, ‘‘ Well, I am not such a bad sinner
as to need a Saviour, I have done as well as I
could, I have led an honest life and so God
must take me into heaven’’—that man is in the
wrong train, no matter what he thinks. Anda
man who goes to church and does not put his
trust solely and only in Jesus, the Saviour of
sinners, but trusts in his going to church, in
his good works, in his prayers, in his believing,
or in anything that he finds in his own sinful
self—that man is in the wrong train.

My dear reader, sooner or later those who
are going the wrong way must be made sensible
of their mistake; they can not keep;on going
wrong, and yet come out right. Either on the
journey or at the journey’s end they must find
out that all is wrong. Oh, if you are in the
wrong train, arise from your dreamy slumber
before the journey is ended, before it is too
late! And if you realize your sad condition, if
you realize that you are in the train to hell and
cry out anxiously, ‘What must Ido?’”’ I say
to you, Stop! stop just where you are. The
Saviour in His wonderful love has followed you
along the road, and is now at your side, and in
the Gospel stretches forth His hands to take
you up in His strong arms and to bear you
safely to heaven. Yes, Jesus, who suffered and
died for our sins, is the way and the only way
to heaven, and every other way is wrong. The
moment you put your trust in this Saviour you
enter upon the right way, you are in the right
train. ‘‘ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
thou shalt be saved,’ says the Word of God
(Acts 16, 31).

——2 ~<a >

(Selected for the ‘‘ Pioncer’’.)

He Pays for Me.

A lady who had been recently brought to
Christ sought the salvation of her husband, but
he stumbled at the great stumbling-stone and
rock of offence, the sacrifice of the cross. One
day, a Christian neighbor entered into conver-
sation with him about the atoning sacrifice of
the Son of God. Coming to # bridge, the
Christian handed two pence to the tollkeeper,
saying:

‘Ts that enough for us both?”

“Tt is,’’ was the tollman’s reply.

‘Do you think,’’ said the believer to his com-
panion, “that it is fair for the tollman to take
the fare for us both from me?’’

“Perfectly fair,’’ was the answer.

“Do you think,’’ said the other, ‘that it
would be just in the tollman to demand the
fare from you, since another has paid it for
you?”

“Tt would be unjust to do so,’’ was the re-
ply, ‘‘for that would be the same as demanding
payment twice.”

“Well, now,’ rejoined his friend, ‘don’t
you see the meaning and value of the work of
Jesus, the Divine Substitute, who died, the
Just for the unjust, that He might bring us
unto God. Lay hold on that Sinbearer as He
is set forth for your acceptance in the Gospel
and you will never come’ into condemnation.
Reject Him, and you perish.”

This simple illustration was the means of
leading that unbeliever to the cross. He had
not gone far on the other side of the bridge,
when he saw the way to life in the death of the
great Substitute, and embracing Jesus he could
say, ‘‘Christ pays for me; Icross the river free.
Justice will not meet me at the other side to
demand from me what is no longer due, since
my Substitute has so gloriously satisfied every
claim.”’

“Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.”
F. T. K.
—__——2 +. o< 0+

That Fire.

Some fifty years ago a gang of Belgian min-
ers, angry with another gang of workers, set a
mass of coal on fire to smoke out their com-
rades. Years have passed away, a generation
has gone, the angry passion of those who thus
sought revenge has become a thing of the past,
but the fire started in that mine long ago
blazes on, and no way has yet been found to
put it out. Burning on, ever consuming, it is
a fitting type of the unceasing power of sin
‘One sinner destroyeth much