THERE are few things possessing a greater power for gathering a crowd in a short time than the alarm bell of the New York Fire Department. There seems to be a peculiar fascination for the majority of people in seeing valuable property spread out as a dainty dish for the merciless flames.
On the afternoon of a warm Saturday in the summer of 1891, a fire broke out in a badly constructed building on one of New York’s busiest streets, which was the means of sending about one hundred precious lives into eternity. Eternity, eternity. Great thought, awful reality.
Here is a scene which I trust will serve to illustrate vividly the work that the Son of God and Son of man completed to the satisfaction of His God, over nineteen hundred years ago: I say to the satisfaction of His God, because He was raised from the dead by the glory of God the Father.
“Pull that wagon out of the road,” shouted an excited fireman, as engine after engine rattled over the paving stones. “Keep back now,” exclaimed the policeman to the curious crowd, as the walls of the Taylor building came crumbling to the ground with a hoarse noise resembling thunder. The occupants were on their way to safety when the building fell, and a mist of dust rose mingled with smoke and murky flame, and the groans of the injured and dying could be heard in every direction.
Quick as thought rushes our hero to the rear of the wreck, where he heard through the brick wall the prayers of nineteen men for deliverance from the death that threatened them. Oh, my reader, have you ever prayed for deliverance from eternal death in the lake of fire, which unmistakably awaits every Christ rejecter, and all who refuse the testimony which God has given of His Son?
Back to the street ran the officer and snatched an ax from Hook and Ladder Company number seven. “Hold on there,” says a fireman, “that belongs to the Fire Department; you mind your business, we can do ours.” Something like what I heard from a professing Christian not long ago when I endeavored to point a hungry soul to Christ, and Him alone, as the only refuge from coming condemnation.
The ready wit of our hero served him well. He did not stand to argue the point, which he might have done, and yet be consistent with his office. No, he ran to the other side of the street to the ax-vendor and got the weapon he wanted without ceremony. Ah, my fellow Christian, if you are going to serve the Master, do not consult man’s theological organizations; go to God Himself, the store without limit, and apply the Word of God, the weapon of the Spirit.
In less time than I can tell it, our hero was wielding the axe with all his might, and making no small impression on the thin brick wall. Soon he made a hole large enough for a head, and then the nineteen prisoners began to breathe freely and take courage. Then it was large enough to crawl through—and out came one, then two, three, four, five, ten, fifteen, nineteen, all saved.
Now, my reader, have you ever thought of the hole made in the wall of sin, the wall of the devil’s building, the wall inside which all humanity outside Christ are imprisoned? Have you ever thought of the size of the hole made in that wall by the man Christ Jesus, when He hung between two thieves on the cross on the little hill called “the place of a skull” outside Jerusalem?
Oh, my friend, He has smashed that wall to pieces. “It is finished,” was His dying cry. What is finished? The work of redemption, the work by which “whosoever will” may have free access to God.
The veil of the temple was rent in two from top to bottom, showing to you and me that God is satisfied with Jesus’ blessed work. My reader, will you not be satisfied with that work too, will you not believe that Christ has put all your sins into the place where there is no remembrance? Will you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that God has raised Him from the dead?
Trust alone to Him, no work of yours will do. Perhaps you say, Am I, not to work? Yes, my brother, you shall work; not to get saved, but because you are saved. “We love Him because He first loved us.” Your works will be prompted by love, not by law.
P. H. T.