Would it not be
better for you to be a cat or dog?
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(Samuel
Davies, "The Wonderful
Compassion of Christ to the Greatest Sinners")
"You will
not come
to
Me that you might have life!" John 5:40
Yet you think that your
not
coming to Jesus is no crime. Is this consistent reasoning?
Is it not
the same as if a rebel should think to excuse himself
by
pleading,
"I have such an inveterate hatred to my king, that I cannot
love him!" Or as if a robber should plead in his
defense, "I
have such an
aversion to honesty, that I cannot possibly help stealing!"
Would not
this be an aggravation of the crime, rather than an excuse!
Is the invincible strength of your hatred to Christ, a
vindication of
it? Are you the more excusable, by how much the more you hate
Him?
Sinners, give up this foolish reasoning, for the matter is
too
important to be trifled with! In short, whatever pleas and
excuses you
make-you will find at last that your destruction is entirely
the
effect of your own perverse desires and choice! You simply
WILL not
come unto Christ, that you might have life-and therefore you
must
perish without it. This reflection will forever torment
you-that you
willfully destroyed yourselves, and were guilty of the most
unnatural
self-murder! To you, therefore, I may properly address that
expostulation:
"Why will you die? Why will you?
Why do you most willfully
destroy
yourselves?
Why will you die?
Why will you causelessly eternally perish by your own act?
What can be greater stupidity than
this!"
In this light, the conduct of sinners is frequently exposed
in the
sacred writings: "The ox knows his owner," says
Isaiah, "and
the donkey his master's crib-but Israel does not
know, My
people does not consider!" Isaiah 1:3. "Every one turns to
his course,"
says Jeremiah, "as the horse rushes into the
battle! Yes, the stork
in the heavens knows her appointed times; and the
turtle-dove
and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of
their coming; but My people," (who are more stupid than these brutes!)
"know not the judgment of the Lord." Jeremiah 8:6-7
To refuse the offer of eternal salvation, when proposed upon
the most
reasonable terms, is to rush into Hell-rather than be saved
by the
friendly hands of Jesus Christ! It is to suffer the most
dreadful
execution, rather than accept Christ's free pardon! It is to
reject all
the bliss of Heaven, when freely proposed by Christ! It is to
choose
the pleasures of sin for a season, rather than an eternity of
the most
exalted happiness!
Is this the conduct of a reasonable creature? No!
Show me the
brute, if you can-that would act so stupid a part in things
which
come within the sphere of its capacity.
Would
it not be better for you to be a cat or dog-than
that brute
man, who is capable of so much
stupidity?
An immortal soul lost! Lost forever!
Lost by its own
obstinacy!
Lost amidst the means of salvation! How tragic a
case is
this!
God dishonored! Jesus rejected! His love spurned!
His
blood
trampled upon! His Spirit grieved!
How
lamentable is this!