SOME builders had been at work, excavating for a foundation for a large hotel. In making their excavation, they had got considerably below the foundation of an adjoining house, and through sheer inattention and carelessness, had dug so close to it as to leave it standing, so to speak, on the very edge of a pit. Saturday night came, and they all went home from their labor. On Lord’s-day morning the inmates of the house observed a crack extending along the ceiling of the top room on the side next the excavation. Little notice was taken of it at first, but as the day passed on it was observed to enlarge, and now and then a sound as of falling dust could be heard; or at intervals, a slight report like the crack of broken wood. These ominous signs increasing as the day wore on, alarmed the inmates, and a closer inspection satisfied them that their fears were not groundless. It was too evident that the whole side of the house next the excavation was sinking outwards, and at any moment might fall bodily into it, and bring down the entire building on their heads.
Dear reader, this is precisely the position of the whole world of the ungodly, and perhaps in a more special sense, that of professing Christendom. At any moment the trumpet may sound, and that which will be redemption to every believer will be the herald of destruction, of shutting out and shutting up to judgment of every one who, having heard the gospel of the grace of God, has rejected it. Ominous signs there are visible enough to those who study God’s word, and are led of his Spirit, and they increase as week by week passes by. The careless world is utterly unconscious of their presence, and yet “without excuse,” because warned from time to time by those who see but too plainly that judgment is impending. And even if the Lord should not come, any moment may be, as all admit, the last to you in this world; death may strike you, and then, if not a saint of God, where would you be? In the pit! For “it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.”
But to return to our little narrative. Having ascertained beyond a doubt that the house was falling, the first thought of the inmates was to seek refuge elsewhere. There was no time to remove a single article of furniture; all had to be left standing just as it was. Safety to life was the first object, and all else must be given up. True, the furniture would be crushed to atoms if the house fell; thieves, too, might enter and steal while it yet stood; but to tarry was to risk that which was more important than all that the house contained, and therefore the inmates went away just as they were, to a place of refuge. Was not this the only proper course? Who can doubt it? But do men act with like wisdom in things of eternal importance? The Lord may come NOW; death may enter suddenly, and the unsaved sinner find instant and overwhelming destruction: —not annihilation, but eternal, never-ending doom. Yet tens of thousands refuse to “flee from the wrath to come,” or they dally with the momentous question, “halting between two thoughts,” until too late!
Reader, if you are not yet safe,” escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain.” Go at once, just as you are, to Christ; tell out all your heart, confess yourself a sinner, own your utter helplessness to say or do or think anything aright. He hath said, “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.”
But there was another incident connected with “the falling house,” which we would seek also to apply. One of the inmates had, as was his duty, tarried to see all safely out, and was at last left alone. In the hurry of departure, a few little necessaries, indispensable under the circumstances, for the use of the family, had been forgotten. These he went upstairs to fetch. He was a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and feeling that it devolved upon himself to run the risk, he undertook it in perfect confidence, as a necessary duty, fully persuaded in his own heart that he was perfectly safe in the Lord’s keeping. Indeed, to express in few words what he did think about the matter, it was that the house could not fall while he was in it. This conviction, whether right or wrong, was so strong that he went about what he looked upon as his duty, without undue baste or any fear whatever. In the meanwhile the builder who had done all the mischief, having been informed of what had occurred, had arrived with a body of men and a load of timber, to save, if possible, the falling house. It was already night, and down in the excavation, the torches held by the workers flashed ever and anon through the crevices in the very foundation of the sinking wall: the crash of ax and hammer, mallet and saw, the shouts of the excited men, the thunder of heavy beams and planks hurled into the pit from the cart on the roadway, the falling debris, and that peculiar and even more ominous sound in the upper rooms, as of dust raining down between the plaster and the wall itself, all spoke of imminent peril to the solitary inmate. Oh what a scene will that be, dear reader, when the Church is gone, when this poor earth is given up of God for a time to judgment, when the crash of armies, the momentary triumph of the wicked, the rain of wrath, all mingle and surround the lonely remnant of God’s ancient people Israel; when “darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people,” and no ray of light breaks in, unless it be the lurid flashes of malignant fires from the very abyss itself! Would you be left in such a scene? Those whom you had loved, it may be, all taken out because they trusted in “the blood,” while you, a temporizer, a despiser of grace, are compelled to moan in inexpressible anguish of heart,
“They are all gone to a world of light,
And I alone sit sorrowing here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
But me — what hope can cheer?”
Do be persuaded, then, to take refuge in the love of Christ while he is yet willing, yea, most willing, to receive you.
To proceed. Having collected what could not well be dispensed with, the solitary inmate of the falling house returned downstairs to the street door. It had been left a little ajar by the last person who went out, and he took hold of it to open it wider; but judge what his feelings were when on attempting to do this he found it immovable! Yes; the weight of the sinking beam above had fixed it as it stood, and no effort of his would move it.
(To be continued, if the Lord will.)