The Time is Short

A selection from a letter by Thomas Chalmers to an unconverted friend, a professor of mathematics, whom he often exhorted to become a Christian. He once told him, “I have long had the utmost regard for you. There is not a human being whom, without the circle of my relationship, I like nearly so well.” This part of the letter was written September 13, 1846, just after he had returned from conducting religious services for the elderly at a hospital.

I have returned from my household sermon to the old people. The text was, “The time is short;” but, in addition to this argument, I endeavoured to press home the growing callousness of the heart to the invitations of the Gospel; yet, nevertheless, the perfect freeness of that Gospel, the benefits and immunities of which are theirs if they will; and on their acceptance of these, they will receive a new heart here, and the joys of an unfading inheritance hereafter.

It is my earnest prayer that God may thus dispose and enable you to receive that truth which is to be found in His Word, and which, if gifted by the Spirit to understand it, you will find to be the power and wisdom of God unto salvation.

Letters of Thomas Chalmers, edited by William Hanna, first published 1853, reprinted by The Banner of Truth, 2007, p. 365.