“Awake thou that steepest!”
It matters little by what means the alarm comes, if it only enables those who are in danger to escape. We have known people converted by hearing some preacher whom they felt the strongest dislike towards, and whose words they vainly sought to get out of their memory. It was the cackling of geese that on one occasion saved Rome from being taken by the enemy; and it was the croaking of a mocking bird which saved a husband and wife in Georgia a few days ago from a horrible death. “Early in the morning they were awakened by the vigorous screaming of their pet, and arose to find their house on fire. They had only time to jump from a window to save their lives.”
Good is it then when the alarm is effective, though even that is but little use unless there be a means of escape also sufficient and effectual. In the middle of the day, lately, there was a fire at Wych Street at a hairdresser’s shop, over which lived some lodgers. People ran to the Churchyard surrounding St. Clement Dane’s Church to get the fire escape, but unfortunately “it was guarded with a stout chain and padlocked.” It was a perfect fire escape, but, alas, not available for practical use, and so two poor children were burnt to death: “they had crept in their fright under the bed when Lynch rescued their baby sister.”
Of what use is a gospel, however perfect its construction, unless it is available as a way of salvation for helpless and perishing sinners. Many invent new gospels and they have every merit but one—they cannot save the soul. They are chained to some imposing edifice of human elaboration—religious or otherwise—it may be; and in the hour of crisis and calamity they are of little worth. There is only one Gospel that is of any use for sinful men and that is the Gospel which Christ brought and Paul preached— “Repentance toward God and faith toward Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And by it one is not merely rescued but is destined to a glorious future. There was a young woman who stood as a condemned criminal in May last before the County of London Sessions. She said she was very sorry for tier offense, but if the judge would let her off there was a young man, to whom she was engaged, an army sergeant, present who would marry her and take care of her. The sergeant said that that was so, and the judge said: “Then I shall liberate the prisoner on condition that you marry her tomorrow.” The paragraph is headed in the police report “Constancy.” When I read it I remembered I had cut out an article from the German paper, Der Gesallshafter, which gave a long account of how in the Middle Ages there was on the Continent a custom of allowing a prisoner to go free—even from the gallows—if any honest person would marry him (or her). The article gives a number of strange instances of this extraordinary means of salvation, though none so extraordinary as that of which the Apostle speaks when he says “that he should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead.”
J. C. Bayly.