A ship may be skillfully guided into the harbor, her crew may be able to leap ashore, and there she will remain till the tide turns; but then, unless her cables are thrown out and she is fastened there, she will drift to sea again. So we may be brought to Christ, a number of influences may lead us to Him, we may be so affected by religious emotion and reverence for Him and even a belief in our personal salvation as to be ready to endure “reproaches and afflictions,” and we may seem to be Christians, yet we may not have joined ourselves to the Redeemer by an act of living faith. Whilst the tide runs that way (and that may be for years) our safety is unsuspected even by ourselves; but let a change come, and slowly we slip away, and at length on some distant coast others come across the fragment of a wreck that bears our name. We may be close to Christ for long without the cable of faith binding us to Him, and thus the soul may drift away even from Him and be lost. ~ C. New