Oh! forbid that this should be _your_ history now, and your history
through eternity (How awful are the words!)--
"They lightly esteemed the _Rock of their Salvation_!"
* * * * *
Reader!--Have _you_ fled to this Living "Rock of Ages?"--Have you made
it your prayer,
"Jesus! Refuge of my Soul!
Let me to Thy bosom fly?"
And in _that_ bosom, and _that_ refuge, are you hiding yourself until
all Earth's "calamities be overpast?" The deeper you hide yourself in
the clefts of the smitten Rock, the safer you are. Oh! do you ever pause
and think that there is a day coming, when this Valley of Tears "and all
the works that are therein, shall be burned up?" When "God shall arise
in the glory of His Majesty, to shake terribly the Earth." When every
mountain peak shall be black with tempest--and the whole valley shall be
a sheet of living fire! Then (as I saw on the evening I entered this
Alpine valley), there shall be but ONE ROCK seen rising far above the
mist, and thunderings, and lightnings, and tempest! JESUS CHRIST, the
Rock of Ages! the Sinner's Refuge! and the Sinner's Friend! Many voices
shall be heard beneath in the valley, calling upon _other Rocks_, but it
will be to hide them from the "_wrath of the Lamb_!" The loose fragments
of stone thrown down from the Rock of Castello crushed hundreds: "On
whomsoever THIS STONE shall fall, it will _grind them to powder_!"
Oh, when the voice of the Great Judge shall resound through the dens and
caves of the Earth with the Question,--"_Sinner, where are thou?_"--How
blessed if you shall be able, from your safe shelter, to reply, "Here
am I, Lord! I heard Thy voice, and I was afraid, because I was naked,
and I hid myself!" Hid yourself! where? Hid myself in
"THE ROCK OF AGES."