THE voice of the last messenger has been heard speaking very loudly in various parts of the world during the past month. In the course of one week the country was thrilled with the tidings of at least four disasters, two of which were of more than ordinary magnitude. These alarming events happened in the three spheres of sea and earth and sky. The Lord has been showing that He is master in all the spheres of creation, whether men recognise Him or not.
The first disaster that falls to be noticed was the loss of the British steamship “Volturno,” which was destroyed by fire in mid Atlantic Ocean. This vessel was on its way from Rotterdam in Holland to New York, and carried emigrants and crew to the number of 657 persons, of whom something like 134 perished. The majority were saved with great difficulty, owing to a storm that raged, by steamers that came to the rescue. The second and the most extensive of the calamities happened in the coal-field of South Wales, at a place a few miles from Cardiff. A terrible explosion took place in a coal pit on Tuesday morning, the 14th October, when 935 men were at work. Fire immediately broke out, with the sad result that no help could be rendered to 400 men, who perished in the mine. This is stated to be one of the very largest disasters that has happened in the history of the British mining industry. A third disaster was a railway smash near Liverpool which occasioned the loss of six lives. The fourth of these melancholy events took place in Germany, when a new airship of immense proportions, belonging to the Government, collapsed in mid air, and fell to the earth a total wreck. The result in this case was the death of 28 persons. By these four disasters, the large number of nearly 600 souls were suddenly ushered in a painful manner into eternity. It was a week of
most distressing sorrow and loss to many families, for whom the keenest sympathy ought to be everywhere felt.
Now, we desire to press home some of the lessons taught by these events, especially upon the minds of those of our readers who have never been properly awakened to realise the sovereign authority and power of God, their accountability to Him, and the urgent necessity of being adequately prepared for death, judgment, and eternity. Many are the dangers by land and sea, which people, when preserved from them, little grasp or understand.
First, there is a general lesson to the age in which we live by these disasters. Men seem to think nowadays that they are the lords of creation, and that by their scientific knowledge they can overcome at their pleasure all the forces of nature and make them subservient to the demands of human ambition. God is not in all their thoughts, and they take little or no account of Him in their reckonings. But they must be taught that He is the universal governor, and that the success of their voyages, schemes, and inventions is dependent upon His approval and help. If He withdraws His hand, the most wonderfully-constructed air vessel in the world falls to the earth in splinters. The practical atheism of multitudes is becoming so gross and defiant that we wonder not at these outbreaks of divine judgment. If such events would be blessed to the spiritual awakening of careless sinners, they would not happen in vain.
Secondly, these events are a succession of voices to all who are accustomed to travel, or who occupy posts of danger in the world. The message is, “Prepare to meet thy God.” Men take great pains to ensure temporal interests in the event of death, but how little thought is given to the soul and its vast interests in view of eternity! Death at most only reduces the body to dust and ashes, but death ushers the soul either into the abode of eternal happiness, or into that of eternal woe. What infinite need of concern to escape the latter! Nowadays, however, the delusion is almost universally fostered that all men, well-nigh without exception, enter into rest at death, and so people imagine they have nothing to fear, no matter how they have lived. A greater mistake could not be made. “The wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment,” saith Christ.
Thirdly, these disasters loudly proclaim to everyone the solemn truths that “it is appointed unto men once to die,” and that they know “neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” Some of us may be far removed from the situations of danger in which many of our fellow-creatures are placed, but this affords us no exemption from the hand of death. That hand may be laid upon us in a quiet and gentle manner, without any of the appalling and dreadful accompaniments that others experience, but the issues are equally the same. It therefore becomes those of us who are out of Christ to take serious warning by the case of
others, no matter in what way death comes to them. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Apart from the new birth, we cannot see the kingdom of grace here, or the kingdom of glory hereafter. Can we contemplate with ease the prospect of being cast into “the outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth?” These painful dispensations of providence are all messages from God, and the more numerous they are, the greater are our responsibilities, and the more inexcusable we shall be found at last, if we neglect and despise them. “The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it” (Micah vi. 9).
Fourthly, we would take occasion from these sad calamities to commend the unspeakable privilege of having a saving interest in Christ. The Son of God took part of flesh and blood that “through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. ii. 14, 15). He has taken the sting out of death, and delivers even from the fear of death. True believers have no reason to fear what has been called “the king of terrors.” Their Lord and Saviour has obtained an eternal victory over him, and they shall share in that victory. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” And even although God’s people, through the infirmity of the flesh or the remaining influence of unbelief, are sometimes afflicted with fears as to the future, yet their state is unchangeably safe. No power in earth or hell can separate them from Christ or His love, and so in life or in death they are “more than conquerors” through Him that loved them (Romans viii. 35, 39). Is there any condition under the sun more to be envied than this? And will those who read these lines and yet know in their consciences that they are on the way to death and eternity without Christ, and without hope, not consider their dreadful state and prospect, and by grace, betake themselves without delay to the Saviour of “that which was lost”? Some have no doubt been saved from “going down to the pit” at their latest breath, but these are the exceptions and not the rule. Rather, a most solemn warning has been given to those who set at nought the Lord’s counsel in the day of privilege and prosperity, in those most impressive and alarming words, direct from His own mouth: “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me; for that they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof. . . . But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil” (Proverbs i. 22, 33).
“Stewards.”
The apostle was anxious to be rightly accounted of, and well
he might be, for ministers are not often estimated rightly. As a
rule, they are either gloried in or else despised. At the com-
mencement of our ministry, when our stores are fresh and our
energies are full—when we blaze and flash and spend much time
in the firework factory—people are apt to think us wonderful
beings, and then the apostle’s word is needed: “Therefore let no
man glory in men” (I Cor. iii. 21). It is not true, as flatterers
insinuate, that in our case the gods have come down in the like-
ness of men, and we shall be idiots if we think so. In due time
foolish expectations will be cured by disappointment, and then we