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In Jersey City, over from New York, there is one of the largest distributing centres of passenger traffic in the world. All the passengers for the various ramifying routes are gathered together in the waiting hall, with the doors closed. Suddenly these doors are flung open, and in a high, shrill key the railway attendant calls out the route of the train that is about to start, and goes over the names of the big towns on that route, in a tale long enough to make him need breath when he has finished it. "Philadelphia," etc., etc., and you see passengers start from their seats among the throng and hurry to the exit the railway man indicates. They are bound for Philadelphia, and the rest. The doors close, and the throng inside the hall settle down again." After some time the doors are flung open again, and the same sing-song of the route and the list of stops. Chicago and St. Louis," and you see another company of passengers make their way out to the waiting train. They are those going to Chicago and St. Louis. Again the doors close, and again they are flung to the wall, and this time the list of names the fellow calls out ends with "Montreal," and, when I heard that, I started up and made for the door; I was going to Montreal. In a few hours they that were one company inside the waiting hall of the station of Jersey City are separated by hundreds of miles, and never all to meet again. That is like this world. We are gathered together in one waiting hall in the station of time, and those sky doors have yet to be flung open, and the voice of God, the last trump, is to burst on every mortal ear, and companies and groups have to separate and gather according to their destination for eternity. Here passengers for heaven: there passengers for hell. You cannot tell in the waiting hall what passengers are bound the glad one way or what passengers are bound the sad other way. The outward appearance is all we can see. He that looketh upon and knoweth the heart is the Lord. Some presumptuous folk would try to erect a dividing barricade in the waiting hall, and divide it into two sections, whose partitions would be covered in regulation form with ecclesiastical jagged broken glass, mostly coloured, I know. But it will not do: it will not do. Leave the division to the Divider Himself. Judge not, but wait till the shout of the archangel of the coming King is heard through the suddenly flung open doors — in a moment, in that moment, in that twinkling of an eye, at that last trump. There are only two groups, and two departures, and two destinations from this waiting hall of time. How fitting the prayer, "Gather not my soul with sinners."

(John Robertson.)

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KJV: Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men:

WEB: Don't gather my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men;