ONE of the most remarkable incidents in the life of the British Empire took place at 11 o’clock on November 11Th 1919. A Great Silence—an indescribable silence –fell over those lands under the British flag, and every man and woman ceased from their work for two minutes, and thought, and many prayed. Remembrance and prayer — for our King had commanded a halt of two minutes to all his subjects. It was the first of the Great Silences which have been observed each year since then.
The busy life of the world went on as usual until eleven o’clock, then the mighty silence fell, broken occasionally by sobs. An old woman stood weeping, wiping her eves with her shawl. Men and women knelt in the streets. A motorcar rushing along, stops suddenly, the driver gets out and stands reverently by the bonnet, with uncovered head. All traffic is suspended, and all work ceases in every town and hamlet. In the railway stations porters stand still by their barrows, no passenger moves, no tickets are issued. In telegraph offices every instrument is stopped by signal. The signalman stands by his lever, soldiers stand with their hands at the salute. At sea the engines of every ship are stopped, and the mighty ships of war, and the huge liners, and every British ship lies still upon the waters in the King’s great silence. All the passengers and all the crews stand motionless, the bugle calls to prayer, then silence, then the Last Post, then full steam ahead.
Down in a coal mine an old man knelt in prayer. His son had been killed in the war, and for many minutes he knelt and prayed. In the convict prisons all work ceased; in the fields the ploughmen stood by their horses; all over the countryside the King’s silence fell. And far across the heaving seas, on every island and continent that held our King’s Allegiance, there this wondrous silence rested.
The flags of Britain were all half-mast, and muffled peals were heard. Men and women stood still, the men stopped smoking, and with bent, uncovered heads, held their part in the world’s great rest. We are told that ninety per cent, of the people wore black, and that tears filled the eyes of multitudes, and many sobbed.
Before the Cenotaph in Whitehall a great crowd stood. One poor widow came weeping there with her little girl, and placed a bunch of flowers at the foot of the memorial. Our King and Queen sent their wreath with these words, “In memory of the glorious dead, from their King and Queen.”
A Child’s Message.
One said, before he left the memorial, that many mourners came with bunches of flowers to add to the tributes already there. One sweet little girl of seven or eight brought a large bunch of roses and carnations, and laid them down. Several people were curious to read what was written upon the envelope attached to the flowers, and they turned away with wet eyes. The message, which apparently had been written by the child herself, read thus: ―
“To my dearest Daddie, from his little Blue Eyes,
“Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast.’”
A captain who was a V.C., and who had lost his sight, led a legion of the blind, then came the maimed and the halt with their crutches, many without arms, and the crowd wept over them as they stood by the memorial to the dead—their comrades in the war. British troops on the Rhine placed wreaths on the British dead who lay in the cemetery at Südfriedhof in Cologne. At Buckingham Palace, there was no motion betraying life. Cabinet Ministers stood still on the steps of the Home Office, In the great schools the boys stood silent.
I was in my own home when the maroons sounded out the summons for silence, and I knelt in prayer.
And then this thought held me with its solemn force: would to God that all the world would pay its reverent homage to the Lord Jesus Christ—that even as men honored the dead by their silence, they would honor the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, Who died to redeem mankind. My Bible lay upon my desk, and turning over its pages, I read Revelation 8:1: “There was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.”
The six seals had been opened (Rev. 6) and judgments had fallen upon the earth; after the opening of the seventh seal, the silence fell in heaven, and the course of judgment is stayed. There is a pause of half an hour, a period of calm before the storm, when the seven angels sound the hour of terrible woes to come.
This is a picture (not a prophetic one) of the state of things in the world today. The silence of God rests over the world that has crucified His Son. There is the pause of this dispensation—more than nineteen hundred years — “the acceptable year of the Lord.” The judgment of this world’s sin seems to halt upon its way, but the “day of vengeance of our God” is coming. The silence of God in this dispensation will be broken when, “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thess. 4:16, 1716For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16‑17).)
This is how the silence of God will be broken then, and that may be at any moment. Then when the “shout,” the “Voice,” the “trump,” are heard by the dead in Christ, the living Christians on the earth, millions upon millions will rise to heaven, in answer to this solemn call, to be “for ever with the Lord.” Millions upon millions will be left on earth, and on them the unsparing wrath of God will descend. We live in solemn days—on the eve of stupendous events. Man is filling the cup of his iniquity to the brim the solemn bell of eternity is tolling out the doom of a lost world. Men and women of God are praying, and preaching, and exhorting, and warning the sinner in his sins to “flee from the wrath to come.” We must pray as we never prayed before, and preach as we never have preached yet. Let the cry of the Shepherd-prophet ring throughout the world today: “Prepare to meet thy God.” Sinner! let the silence of your life towards God be broken by your cry now, “God be merciful to me a Sinner.” Christian! let your voice be heard in heaven saying, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come.”
Heyman Wreford.