But how soon God may call that soul back to Himself, away from the body,
where it lives now, who can tell?

I am just now thinking of some young voyagers whose passage from time to
eternity was indeed short, but the story is so sad that I could not tell
you about it if I did not remember what the Lord Jesus once said, when He
was teaching His disciples. He called a little child to Him, and began
to speak to them about such little children, and one of the things which
He said was this, "The Son of man is come to save that which was lost"
(Matt. xviii. 11). And again He said (you will find this verse in the same
chapter), "It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one
of these little ones should perish."

Since even the very little children have gone astray from God, so that the
Lord Jesus spoke of them as "lost" and "perishing," how could I tell you
this story, if the Lord from heaven, He who called Himself the "Son of man"
when He was here in this world, had not come to save that which was lost?

This is the sad, true story:

It was on a beautiful Monday morning, in the bright June weather, that the
scholars belonging to a large Sunday-school in Ireland were travelling with
their teachers and friends from the town where they lived to spend the day
at a lovely place by the seaside. How proud and happy they were, all these
boys and girls, as they marched through the town waving their flags and
singing, and how much they had to say about the grand time they were going
to have! You may be sure they liked a long holiday out of doors, with games
and races, and buns and oranges, as much as you do, and so they got into
the train in high glee.