Twilight And Dawn | Page 9

and this is what makes
your beginning such a great thing to think of. It is a beginning which
has no end; the part of you which is most really yourself, must live on
always. You can never stop living for one moment; for there is on
board your little boat a wonderful passenger. God has put into you a
living soul, which can never die.
But how soon God may call that soul back to Himself, away from the

body, where it lives now, who can tell?
I am just now thinking of some young voyagers whose passage from
time to eternity was indeed short, but the story is so sad that I could not
tell you about it if I did not remember what the Lord Jesus once said,
when He was teaching His disciples. He called a little child to Him, and
began to speak to them about such little children, and one of the things
which He said was this, "The Son of man is come to save that which
was lost" (Matt. xviii. 11). And again He said (you will find this verse
in the same chapter), "It is not the will of your Father which is in
heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."
Since even the very little children have gone astray from God, so that
the Lord Jesus spoke of them as "lost" and "perishing," how could I tell
you this story, if the Lord from heaven, He who called Himself the
"Son of man" when He was here in this world, had not come to save
that which was lost?
This is the sad, true story:
It was on a beautiful Monday morning, in the bright June weather, that
the scholars belonging to a large Sunday-school in Ireland were
travelling with their teachers and friends from the town where they
lived to spend the day at a lovely place by the seaside. How proud and
happy they were, all these boys and girls, as they marched through the
town waving their flags and singing, and how much they had to say
about the grand time they were going to have! You may be sure they
liked a long holiday out of doors, with games and races, and buns and
oranges, as much as you do, and so they got into the train in high glee.
But that train never reached the lovely place at the seaside. Before it
had gone very far on its way there was a dreadful accident; some of the
carriages were crushed and broken, as if they had been matchboxes,
and many of those bright boys and girls were killed all in a
moment--the short voyage of their life was over; oh, how soon!
By-and-by some doctors came hurrying to the place where the ruined
train lay, and began to look about to find those who might not be dead,
only hurt. It was a sad sight they saw, and one they can never forget.
While they were busy, giving help here and there, someone noticed two
little ones, sitting on the green bank, beside the wreck of the train. A
doctor went up to see if they were hurt. No, they were picking the
daisies which grew among the grass; they were too young to

understand what a dreadful thing had happened.
"Were you in the train, my dears?" said the kind doctor.
"Yes," said a little girl of six years old, "we were in the train, and she
was too," and she pointed to where another child lay quite still upon the
grass; not picking daisies--no, she could not speak or move, she was
dead.
Put your finger on your wrist, and keep very still for a moment. Listen.
You feel something, do you not? Something alive, and it goes beat,
beat; one, two, three, like the ticking of a watch. As long as you live,
that tick, tick will go on; but for this little girl it had stopped, because
her heart had ceased to beat. When the doctor put his hand upon her
wrist, he could feel nothing moving there. "She is quite dead," he said,
as he took her body up from the grass that it might be carried back to
her home, the home which she had left that morning, so happy and gay.
At the Sunday-school these children had been taught about the
"wondrous, glorious Saviour," of whom you sometimes sing, and we
may believe that the spirit of this dear child, redeemed to God by the
precious blood of Christ, went straight from that wrecked train to spend
its long for ever with the One who had loved her and given Himself for
her; and that God, who takes care of the poor little body which was laid
low