Jerry's Last Chance

(A Message to Drunkards)

"There goes that sanctified preacher from over on Ray Street," smiled Jerry with a point of his finger.

The sky was filled with banks of fleecy white clouds that morning in September when Pastor Abe Harper walked out of his mission and started home. Just as he was passing Tobe's Saloon he heard someone inside say, "There goes that sanctified preacher from over on Ray Street."

"Yes," responded the pastor, as he stepped back and looked through the doorway into the face of the young man, whose sin-marked countenance could not fail to distinguish him from his few attending associates. "What about you fellows coming around to the mission tonight?"

"I ain't got no business around there myself," answered the lad who had stopped the pastor by his intended insult.

"What about your soul? Do you want to be lost?" inquired the pastor, turning his face from the alcoholic breath of the youth.

"No, I don't want to be lost," was the boy's reply, accompanied by a silly grin. "You ain't going to get me around there as long as I live like this. Wouldn't I look fine around there with you good church-goin' folks? I guess I'll go on and finish sowing my wild oats; and when I finish, I'll get converted and live right."

"But suppose you were to die before you finish sowing your wild oats?" asked Pastor Harper, taking a quick glance at the two other youths who were standing near with drooped heads in complete silence, and possibly wishing they were elsewhere for the time being.

"Preacher, I don't intend to live like this always. I'll get right when I grow older."

The pastor placed his hand gently on the boy's shoulder and asked, "What's your name, son?" The youth, with a look of embarrassment, replied, "Louis, - Jerry Louis."

Since his conversation seemed to be making little, if any, impression upon Young Lewis, Rev. Harper, with tears in his eyes walked away, leaving the youth with this warning: "You had better change your mind and come around to the mission tonight. The Bible says 'now is the accepted time."

"Not tonight, maybe before the revival closes," came the lad's reply, as he turned and smiled at the bartender, who, he knew, was just waiting for Rev. Harper to leave so that he could start teasing.

The next day, about noon, Pastor Harper was at home eating lunch when his doorbell rang. And before he could answer, it rang again, this time in a demanding way. "Telegram for Rev. Abe Harper," a boy said, scarcely looking up. And then handed him the yellow envelope and at the same time pushed a slip of paper at him saying, "Sign here, Sir."

The pastor was thinking. He quickly scribbled his name; then handed the slip back to the boy. When the door closed, he stepped back to his chair and opened the envelope. The message was from Hobbston, a city about forty-two miles away. It read: "Dear Rev. Harper. Son in City Hospital. Serious spine and head injuries. Auto accident. Three companions killed. Will you please come and pray for Jerry? Mrs. Stanley F. Louis.."

"That's sister Effie Johnson's nephew," said Mrs. Harper, as the pastor looked again at the name.

"Jerry! Oh," the pastor exclaimed, "Jerry Louis! That's the boy I told you about talking with at the saloon yesterday."

The "please come" arose in the pastor's mind and prompted quick action. On his way to the hospital he thought of many words that were spoken between him and young Louis the day before. When he arrived and saw the boy so pale and enclosed in such heavy casts that he could not even move his head, the pastor's heart was torn with grief.

"Do you know me?" asked the pastor gently, as he looked in the face of the dying lad.

"Rev. Harper," softly replied Jerry. And in the same weak voice he continued, "It's too late now. I'm lost, lost forever. Don't bother to pray for me. Keep your prayers for those who are worthy, for I am not."

"Thank you," he said to the nurse as she wiped his brow and moistened his parched lips. "I'm not dead to kindness, if I am to hope. And thank you, Rev. Harper, for your interest in my soul... yet, to me it is worthless now. For when we do wrong, we must pay for it. I've followed the wrong crowd and now I must pay. Heaven was made for the righteous; not for adulterers and drunkards. There are two places - heaven and hell. I have made my choice by the way I've lived."

After a few moments in silence, Jerry caught a glimpse of his mother as she wiped the tears from her wrinkled face; then, with tears seeping out from under his closed eye lids, he whispered, "It's awful to go like this."

"Jesus can help you, Jerry," said Rev. Harper softly as he placed his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Not me," slowly murmured the dying youth. "I -am-lost-lost-for . . ."

With his sentence unfinished Jerry Louis shuddered and all was over. His despairing soul had taken its last plunge into eternity. "I am lost, lost forever!" It seemed that the very chamber where he died kept the echo of those words crying for several minutes.

Yes, dear reader, this young man was "suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy." He was carried to the hospital with a drunken and crushed body and put into a bed, from which he never arose. Within thirty-six hours after his last warning he had gone into eternity just as he had lived --- unprepared to meet God. Strong drink and riotous living had claimed another victim. Terrible was the sight of his swollen face. The man of God had been called in, but what could he do? What could he say? What could he offer to the one who had now finished sowing his wild oats-but too late?

"He has lived his life," said the minister in conducting the funeral; "I shall not speak of it, for it cannot be altered now. You have yours before you; so I speak now to you, especially to you young people."

Before the minister concluded, he read from the Scriptures the following verses: "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon" (Isa. 55-6,7). "For He saith, 'I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee; behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation"' (2 Cor. 6:2).

What about it, my reader, do you know anything about this salvation? Have you confessed your sins to the One who is faithful and just to forgive you, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness?

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