A Great Risk!

Francis Bourdillon, 1873

In every town in England, and in many a village too, will be found the agent of some fire insurance company. If your house is insured, the loss will not all fall upon you should it happen to be burned down; the insurance company must bear the loss, at least in part. And if you should ever have to give up work through illness—still you need not go on the poor-house, provided you are insured.

Fire insurance offices and benefit clubs therefore are good things, because they guard against risk and provide for needs that may arise. And the vast number of houses insured, and the thousands of men who belong to a club, prove that people in general are of this opinion.

Yet there is a risk which many of these very people are not providing against. It would be a bad thing to be burned out of house and home or to fall ill and be forced to go on the poor-house. But the risk that I mean is the risk of a far worse thing—nothing less than the loss of the soul!

Now there are many club members and many people whose houses are insured against fire—who are yet taking no precaution whatever against the loss of their souls! Perhaps you are such a person. Yet this is not because there is no way of guarding against this risk; for there is a way, as simple and ready a way as in either of the other cases. The Bible is at hand, and the gospel is preached where you may hear it; and you may pray, and God is always ready to receive and save all who come to Him by Jesus Christ.

Why then do you not guard against this dreadful risk—the risk of your soul being lost? How can you be content to go on, day after day, exposed to so fearful a danger—when the way of escape is open?

You know well that it would be too late to insure your house when the fire had broken out, and too late to join a club when sickness had seized you. And so it will be too late to seek salvation—when the time of judgment shall have arrived.

Come! Be wise for your soul. Be wise in time. Be wise now. You are in the greatest danger, if you are yet in your sins. For though I have called this a risk and have likened it to other risks—yet it cannot in truth be likened to them in all points. The house that is not insured may never be burned down, and the man who joins no club may perhaps never be laid aside by sickness. But he who neglects to seek Christ as his Savior must certainly perish.

Oh, think of the awful danger you are in while you are without Christ! Seek Him at once as your Savior. Pray that His blood may wash away your sins—pray for a new heart. Live not a day longer as you are—in danger of God's eternal wrath. It is a fearful risk!