March 15

But if ye shall at all turn from following Me, ... then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them. — 1 Kgs 9:6-7

Life is a more perilous ocean than the Atlantic. People talk about the terrors of death, but living has greater terrors than dying.

In Miss Procter’s poem a child asks, “What is life, father?” and gets the answer that life is a battle, where many fail and yield. Then the child asks, “What is death, father?” We are not surprised that when she learns that death is the rest which comes at the end of the strife, she says, “Let me die, father; I fear to live.” But the wise answer is, “You must live first, and win your crown on the battlefields of life.”

Life is full of perils, but there is One who can guard us from stumbling and present us faultless before the presence of God at last. We need only to have Christ for our Friend, and He will bring us safely through all peril. But without Christ we never can get home.

A tourist in the Alps said he needed no guide, and he set out one morning alone. But he never returned.