The broad way!
Spurgeon, "A Message from God to His Church and People"
"Wide is the gate and broad is the way that
leads to
destruction, and many are they that go in thereat."
In my meditations I thought I saw a precipice, whose
frowning steep overhung a sea of fire. Leading up to
its brink I saw a road exceeding broad, a road which
was crowded from side to side with a thronging multitude,
who pressed and trod one upon another in their raging
zeal to reach the summit of the crag.
They went gaily on, merrily laughing, singing to sprightly
music; many of them dancing, some of them pushing
aside their fellows that they might sooner reach the
end of what they knew so little.
As I looked at that end which none of them could
see, I saw a cataract of souls, falling in a ceaseless,
headlong stream into depths unutterably profound.
As the crowd came on rank by rank to the edge of this
precipice, they fell, they leaped over, or were dashed
from the treacherous crag, and descended amid cries
and shrieks surpassing all imagination into a lake of fire,
wherein they were submerged with an everlasting baptism,
overwhelmed with destruction from the presence of the Lord.
I thought I heard their groans and moans their shrieks and
sighs as they first caught sight of the terrible abyss and
would have shrunk back from it, but were quite unable to.
Even now I see before my eyes that terrific Niagara
of souls descending by thousands every hour into
the gulf unknown.
This is the broad way of which we had heard
so often,
wherein multitudes delight to walk. Sure and terrible is
the doom of every one who treads therein.
Among them perhaps your own children, perhaps your
wives, your husbands, your sons, your daughters, your
parents, going in that motley crew, onward, swiftly
onward, towards their dreadful end.
Christian men and women, hear the voice of God.
My God will cast them away; their end will be destruction;
they will be driven from the presence of the Lord. Let these
thoughts, my brethren, burn in your souls until all coldness
and indifference are consumed. Men die, and their souls
are lost. Men die and their bodies are laid in the grave,
but their souls descend into hell.
|