A Story of the World's Fair, 1893.
Luke 12:5
About nineteen hundred and seventy years ago the Lord Jesus spoke a parable which should be all the more heeded at this time. He told of a rich man (Luke 12) whose fields brought forth such abundance that he had no room in which to store his harvest. Then said he, "This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater." He meant to live many years longer, for no man begins to build without desiring to finish and enjoy. He said, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry."
"But God said." Ah! he had not thought of Him, nor of the Potter who has power over the clay He molds. "God said, Thou fool! this night thy soul shall be required of thee." Have we heeded this parable, recorded for us by the pen of inspiration so long ago?
In November, 1893, one man forgot it. Great numbers were gathered together in the now world-famed city of Chicago. Not an "innumerable multitude of people," as on the hill-sides of Galilee when the foregoing parable was spoken, but a worldly, godless company celebrating the glories of the World's Fair. They had that day been exalting the Mayor of the city that the world wondered after. He thus addressed the assembly. Listen to his words: "I believe that I will live to see the day when Chicago will be the biggest city in America. I don't count the past. I have taken a new lease on life, and I intend to live more than half a century longer. At the end of that half-century London will be trembling lest Chicago should surpass her."
The mayor and his city were exalted—yes, his own life he would prolong; he had taken into his own hands the keeping together of body, soul and spirit. To "half a century ahead," in his daring presumption, he looked forward. '
But God still sits in heaven; "and among the inhabitants of the earth" "none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, what doest Thou?" (Dan. 4:35.) Within nine hours the speaker of those impious words met a violent death, and his spirit returned to God who gave it. "If He cut off... then who can hinder Him?" Job 11:10.
The mayor was like Herod who sat on his throne in all the pomp of regal display. He spoke, presumably he boasted, and the people applauded, saying, "It is the voice of a god, and not of a man." And immediately the angel of God smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he gave up the ghost" (Acts 12). "Vain man would be wise"-but he likes to be so without God.
Great Babylon of the future will do the same. She will glorify herself as she has ever done. She, the empty shell of Christendom, the personification of religion without Christ, will say, "I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." Wherefore, to her in whom is found the blood of all the saints, "shall come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her" (Rev. 18).
Reader, "God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few." Eccles. 5:2.
It is a solemn thing to leave Him out of our lives! He alone can do "Whatsoever pleaseth Him" (Eccles. 8:3). Thankfully may we add that "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (1 Cor. 1:21). He "sent His Son a propitiation for our sins," and death has no terrors for the lowly, contrite heart that believes the record that God has given of His Son.
"And this is the record, that God hath given to us [that is, to believers] eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 1 John 5:11, 12.