A BALTIC steamer making for a Forth port suddenly struck on a rock off St. Abbs’ Head, and foundered in twenty minutes. Two circumstances in connection with this incident are worthy of note.
First. The wreck was caused by the deflection of the needle of the compass produced by a thunderstorm, and thus the captain lost his bearings.
Second. The electric motor of the local lifeboat was out of order, and the boat could not be utilized in saving the passengers and crew.
You say these are simple accidents of everyday occurrence with nothing to command more than passing interest. I reply: Have these facts no lesson for the reader of these pages? Listen!
Your vessel is voyaging over life’s stormy wave. Have you a port in view? We talk glibly of “heaven.” Everybody in a way expects to “die and go to heaven.” No man imagines he may be overwhelmed on the rocks of eternal judgment by being deflected by the seductions of the world. Nor does he expect that the lifeboat of salvation will fail him in his dying hour.
In all tenderness and affection, I implore the reader to pause and consider the reality of all these things.
How well you may have begun life! With what prospects of prosperity and hopes of happiness was your course initiated! How the sunshine of success ever shone upon your path! How you were esteemed, valued, respected and sought after! But, alas! you got deflected. The lightning shafts of Satan turned your magnet from its pole. Your course was shaped for destruction. The wine cup, the card table, the theater, and the fetters of the “strange woman” turned you from the paths of righteousness, and now you find yourself a wreck, foundered and broken on the rocks of destruction with no prospect in view for either time or eternity, but the sad end of a misspent life. No lifeboat in view. No hope for eternity. No prospect but the blackness of darkness ever before you.
Do I address one so broken for the present, and so void of hope for the future? To such an one I would offer a simple word.
God’s compass can never be deflected—it ever points to Christ as the Saviour. God’s Lifeboat—Christ—is ever available. Come to the Lord Jesus Christ in all your wretchedness, and pleading only your ruined and lost condition, He will save you from the coming storm. He died to meet the sinner’s need. He suffered, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18).)
Once more I beseech you to come to Christ. Come as you are, come with no thought of self-improvement or merit, come in your need as a sinner. Own yourself as a lost sinner, and trust Him as the sinner’s Saviour. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isa. 53:5, 65But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5‑6).) Repose your soul, therefore, upon the finished work of Christ, and salvation, full, present, and free, shall be yours.
C. S. R.