“Throw off the cumbersome weight you are carrying on your back, and travel on the way where your burden will be light,” came a friendly voice from the Rescue Station.
“I am not so foolish as to throw away my only hope,” he answered with unthankfulness in his tone.
“‘Your only hope,’” repeated the voice of warning, “how can you explain such foolish words?”
“With passing ease. I will soon come to the River of Death and with these boards I can make myself a raft whereon I can pass over safely.”
Then spoke the voice of warning clearer than before:
“O, foolish man! Knowest thou not that the River of Death, toward which thou art rapidly moving, cannot be crossed in a bark so frail? I have seen millions who tried in vain to ride its angry currents, but they sank beneath its dark waters. Come, O mortal man, if thou hast nothing better on which to depend, listen to the voice of wisdom and come, without delay, to the Path of Glory.”
But the man passed on. I watched him till he reached the river, and saw him go from the shore in his self-constructed raft.
“I sink! I sink! Save me!” he, cried in utmost agony of terror as his little raft whirled about, leaving the poor self-deceived fellow to the mercy of the waves.
I saw others as they passed the Place of Warning. Thousands and tens of thousands, some now totally deaf to every voice of warning, some with cotton-filled ears, and others with instruments of music with which they drowned the calls of warning.
Many more passed by who carried little balloons of self-righteousness with which they expected to rise above the murky River of Death.