IT was late one Saturday night when the subject of this story, a draper in a southern suburb of London, retired to rest. He had toiled through the week, and was soon heavy with sleep, altogether unconscious of any danger. His stock-in-trade being to him of immense value, he had a trap-door made in the floor of his bed-room, which was immediately over his shop, so that opening the trap he might at any time see if all were safe below.
Early in the morning his wife was awaked by the smell of fire. She roused her husband; he leaped up, lifted the trap-door, and saw, to his horror, a blaze below.
To shut down the trap, call to his wife to snatch up their sleeping babe, and shout to the household in the upper part of the building to escape for their lives, was but the work of a moment. He had just time to make a dash into his shop through the smoke, and to rescue his ledger from the flames; but his opening of the door fanned the flames into fury, and in a few moments everything—insurance policy and all that he had—was but smoke and ashes. "Even the very clothes I wear," said he, "and those of my wife and children, are not our own.”
The writer to whom this incident was narrated was struck very forcibly by its application to the multitudes of people who are spiritually asleep; they think they are secure, but really the flames of judgment are already under their feet. As he heard the draper tell his tale, he could but think of the day when there will be nothing left of this world's pleasures or wealth, when, its business and excitements over, men, women, and children must stand before God, and remember that that time may be here in a moment.
We would raise the trap-door, as it were, and bid you look beneath you, reader. The world and all that is therein shall be burned up; that for which you live, if you are living for aught save Christ, will be destroyed. There is, as it were, but the thickness of a board between you and everlasting destruction, that is if you are one of the thousands who live for this world, for its business, its wealth, its rewards.
My friend could not possibly find safety in his burning house, his only safety lay in escape from it. He was a hard-working man, and his business was his all, but the moment his eye fell on the flames, his love to his wife and child, and his desires for his household, made another man of him. Then his dreams of prosperity and wealth in his shop were over, and his only thought was the safety of those whom he loved. He fled for dear life from the very place he had lived for. A very good illustration this of conversion; that sight through the trap-door turned him out of his house for salvation sake. Would to God you might get such a sight of eternity, which is so near you, as to cause you to flee from the wrath to come!
He had no wish to select the most suitable clothes of his wardrobe for himself and his family, in order that they might quit the house in favorable attire;—no, nor does the sinner who believes the reality of God's word respecting coming judgment wait first to deck himself in this or that garment of self-righteousness; he is possessed with one great consideration,—his own safety. And the sinner's safety depends, not on what the house of this world will afford him, but on his getting out of it.
This is the first consideration, dear reader—"escape for thy life." If you sleep on, you will be lost. It is only a question of time. Another hour and our friend the draper would have been burned up, and his wife and child with him. You have no time to lose; if you delay you will be lost, and not yourself only; you may be the cause of the woeful end of your nearest and dearest friends.
As my friend spoke to me, saying the very clothes he stood in were not his own, I could but think of the grace which clothes as well as saves the believer. We stand in Christ, we are clad in Christ, and we can sing—
“Clad in this robe how bright I shine,
Angels possess not such a dress.”
The draper was insured, we have observed, but his policy was burnt, therefore he had nothing to show why the insurance company should make good his loss. But the record of the insurance at the head office was not burnt. His hope, therefore, rested in the books of the company, and, we may say, the integrity of the company and his confidence were bound up in those records. Reader, are you one of that large class whose faith rests on some evidence in themselves? Do you rest, for example, upon the Holy Spirit's work in your soul? Sometimes all this appears to you to have vanished, like the poor draper's insurance policy! He had to trust to records kept by the head office, you have the word of God to rely on.
The divine record stands unchanged; you may rest perfectly confident in what God says. The secured possession of eternal life to every believer in the Son of God is based on the simple but blessed fact that He has not only removed all the evil from the sight of God by His shed blood, but that He in resurrection and ascension to God's right hand has become the righteousness and the life of every believer.
God's own blessed purpose is to take away all ground of confidence in self, so that we may find true, stable, and eternal rest in His own beloved Son. G. L.