THREE seconds only of miscalculation and the Submarine was sunk and nine valuable lives sacrificed!”
Such was the comment, when the First Lord of the Admiralty stated, “I think I can indicate with tolerable accuracy how the accident happened to Submarine Al.
“In the first place, the instrument for scanning the horizon can only be used to look in one direction at one time, and thus, whilst an eager look-out was being maintained for the ship of the supposed enemy in this one direction, an unlooked-for enemy crept up behind in the shape of the Liner.
“Secondly, when at last the Liner was discovered, only fine seconds were available for the officer in charge to decide on his course of action to avoid a collision. He decided to dive under the Liner, but this decision was too late.
“Thirdly, only three seconds more time were needed to have avoided the collision altogether.”
The news of the loss of Submarine Al came as a horrible shock to every right-minded person. And yet still more gigantic disasters occur daily in our very midst. Are not men and women with great eagerness occupied with the things seen and temporal, whilst at the same time they are all oblivious of the enemy creeping up behind, who, with his icy hand, will lay hold on them and hurl them into an unsaved sinner’s eternity.
The blessed God would have us scan behind and before, below and above: behind, our sinful past; before, an eternity of bliss or woe; below, a hell to be shunned; and above, a heaven to be secured.
Friendly Reader, bear with me a moment. Let us together scan the whole horizon. What do we see?
Men and women, youths and maidens, boys and girls; like gaudy flowers, they opera to the sun, then droop, fade, die, sink into the earth, and they are gone forever from the moving shifting scenes of earth and time. Gone! Where? And you are going, and I am going―going where?
Oh! do, as you value life, and love both liberty and joy, do think for one moment; do look all around. The world entices you, sin hardens you, Satan blinds you; but stop just for one moment further and look up! God in His grace has opened a bright heaven for you to look right in and there see Jesus, “once made lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.” He beckons you to come to Him, to trust in Him. He died, He lives “that he might deliver you from this present evil world “and bring you into His bright world of eternal glory.
Dare we look down―down into the bottomless pit, the place prepared for the devil and his angels, not for man? Remember, however, that the broad road of sin and folly leads to and ends in death and destruction. Stop, then, stop! I pray you.
But then notice, it is said that the officer in charge of Submarine Al had five seconds of time to decide on his course, and his decision fixed his doom.
God has given you in His mercy years and years to decide. His long-suffering has been so great, and yet you have not decided! At any moment, that heart of yours may cease its beating; at any moment, reason may quit her throne; at any moment, grim death, like the lightning flash, may lay bold of you as its gray. And then it will be all too late to decide.
Do, I pray you, heed the warning voice now, and decide for Christ, Heaven, and Glory.
Submarine Al and its gallant crew might have been alive and well today if only they could have avoided the danger by three seconds more of precious―oh, how precious! ―time.
“A kingdom for a moment more of time,” said a dying queen. How we cling to blessings we have toyed with, when they are being snatched from our enfeebled grasp.
The three seconds which the men of Submarine Al needed, never were given them, and they went down to a watery grave, and, mourned by a nation, passed into eternity.
Heaven and earth, angels and demons, saints and sinners, await the moment when “there shall be time (delay) no longer” (Rev. 10:66And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: (Revelation 10:6)).
To those who through grace have looked around and within, and have taken their true place as sinners in time’s little day, a long unending eternity will be bliss indeed―a day without a night.
But to those who have missed the day of opportunity, that long night will begin with all its untold horrors, never to end.
Again we say in closing, Do let the disaster of Submarine Al and the fate of its human freight speak to you. It has spoken to me. It is God’s voice saying to you, as to Israel of old, “Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?”
G. W. H.