One little boat would start off very straight, and then suddenly stop because it had run against some hidden rock; the greater number, in spite of all our efforts to steer them, would get into the current, and so be carried down the stream out of our sight; while some at once turned on their sides, got filled with water, and became dismal wrecks.
I can remember well how happy we were in spite of all such disasters and losses!
But we should have been surprised indeed in those days if anyone had told us, as we launched our boats, and watched them sail away from land—to "America" or "India," or any of those far-away places where we used to pretend they were going—that we were like those boats of ours. And yet it would have been true, for we too had been launched; the voyage of life had begun for us; and every birthday that came found us a little farther from the place from whence we had started—a little nearer to the end of the voyage, the place whither we were bound. Yes, in this sense you and I and all the people in the world are voyagers on the stream of time. But this voyage of our life—how long will it be?
That is one of the things which no one can tell. God alone knows.
In one sense the story of your life may be soon told; your little voyage down the stream of time may be very short, and your boat may reach the great ocean of eternity before many birthdays have come and gone. But in another sense it is a story without an end; 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.