THE FAMILY ALTAR

June 29.

"Yet there is room!" Luke 14:22.

For nineteen centuries now the gracious Gospel-call has gone

out into the sin-lost world : "Come ; for all things are now ready !"

And yet there are over eight hundred million poor heathen in the

world who have never heard of their redemption by Christ and

still are strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope,

and without God in the world. In addition, there are the many

unchurched classes in our civilized countries. In our own America

sixty million souls are said to be living and dying without the

saving Gospel. Oh, what an incentive for us all who are feasting

on the heavenly viands of saving grace to remember these countless

starving souls and to do what our Savior commands: "Go out

into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in" to

the marriage supper of the Lamb. Compel them how? Not by

physical force or by passing all kinds of Sabbath-laws, or so-called

temperance laws, or any other kind of laws with the view of mak-

ing people better and more virtuous. You cannot legislate morality,

much less religion, into the sinful human heart. Force here will

only make hypocrites or rebels. The only compulsion our Lord

Jesus knows of in His soul-winning work is that of the all-

compelling force of His redeeming, pardoning, and saving love

revealed in His glorious Gospel. That saved the old world from

moral ruin and destruction. It is the only power to save the

present world. What we need in these evil days is Christians

who are consumed, as the first Christians were, with burning

love for their perishing fellow-men and who, like Peter and John,

in the face of all opposition and persecution declare: "We cannot

but speak the things which we have seen and heard." "For there

is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we

must be saved" but the name of Jesus. (Acts 4, 12. 20.) May

we all become such zealous witnesses of our blessed Savior! May

we seize every opportunity also to-day to speak to unconverted

sinners of the saving love of Jesus and bring them His gracious

invitation: "Come; for all things are now ready."

Yet there is room, the Master has said,

Room at the feast His bounty has spread;

Out of the lanes and hedges of sin

Gather them in, gather them in.

This is the message from Jesus to-day,

Now in compassion we hear Him say,

Earnestly, tenderly ask them to come,

Tell them there yet is room.