“WRECK of a Cape Liner! Two hundred and fifty lives lost! Only three survivors!”
These were the startling words that sent a shudder through many, as their eyes fell on the newspaper placards, or scanned the pages of the daily papers for 18th June 1896.
The roll-call of sudden and unexpected death has indeed been heavy since this year opened. It would take a page merely to enumerate the accidents and disasters, both by land and by sea, in South Africa, America, Russia, Japan, and now close to our very shores.
It seems but yesterday since I myself was homeward bound in a Cape Liner, and passed the ill-fated “Drummond Castle” on her last outward voyage. There she goes, steaming swiftly and proudly southward with her freight of immortal souls. A few years ago I had also been a passenger on board that very ship, and all this makes the horrors of this, her last trip, appear most vividly to my mind. Well can I picture to myself the scene on board that fatal Tuesday evening. The voyage is now practically at an end. All the gaiety of the three short weeks trip is now in the past, the nightly concerts and dances and the daily sports are over, and possibly on this very Tuesday night the farewell entertainment has been given in the saloon.
Eleven o’clock at night, the ship is off Ushant, and doubtless not a few are peering through the darkness to catch the first sight of the lighthouse so well known to all travelers on these coasts. Some are in their berths, just dropped off to sleep. Not a few are smoking, drinking, and card-playing in the smoking-room. All are unconscious of danger, and yet that ship is steaming steadily and swiftly to her destruction.
We cannot allow this direful calamity to pass without a notice in these pages. The heart sickens to think of the suddenness with which those two hundred and fifty lives were cut short, and it is impossible to contemplate the scene without a shudder. Were they ready? Reader, are you?
Well do I know the life that is lived on these ocean trips, the godlessness, the sinfulness, the mockery and contempt for all that is of God and Christ. A few amongst them, but, oh, how few! care for the Lord Jesus Christ. The bulk will not listen when spoken to about Him; they laugh at the suggestion that life is uncertain; they mock at those who confess their faith in the Saviour and His atoning sacrifice for sin on the cross. It is too painfully evident that their minds are at enmity against God, and that in their hearts they love the world and the things of the world, while they have no room for Christ, and no desire after God. Had a messenger of God’s grace stood up that night to preach God’s glad tidings of salvation, would he have been welcomed? Had he warned them of the uncertainty of life, would he have been believed? Reader, do you take warning by these few lines? You know not what a day may bring forth for you. You may be carried home a corpse before this day is over. Your life may, too, be suddenly cut off. I ask you, How is it with your soul? Are you ready to die? Dare you meet God, a holy, sin-hating God, this very moment?
“But God is merciful!” you exclaim. True, but God hates sin, and God is holy. Can He suffer your sins to be in His holy presence for all eternity? Nay, heaven would be no heaven if sin were there.
But God has Himself provided a remedy for sin; have you availed yourself of it? The “Drummond Castle “going at full speed struck upon a rock, and with one great and awful plunge went down beneath the deep waters of the Atlantic. In three minutes size was out of sight, and her freight of immortal souls was launched into eternity. There was no lifeboat there, no help was near, no means of escape for those poor unhappy men, women, and children. They were doomed, and the wonder is that even three escaped.
But, reader,
you may be saved!
Salvation, the salvation of your soul, is now within your reach. You need never be lost, for Jesus has died, “the Just for the unjust,” His precious blood can cleanse you from every spot and stain of sin, and make you ready this very moment to stand before God in the unsullied light of His holy presence. Oh, believe it! Trifle no longer! This may be your last opportunity. Do you sneer at this appeal? Remember that God is not mocked; He has warned you since this year began by one disaster after another; have you not yet heeded? Do you still despise His voice, and neglect His loving entreaty to come to the Lord Jesus Christ?
He will not plead forever.
Do you remember the solemn words, “He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy”? (Prov. 29:11He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. (Proverbs 29:1).) May God grant that this sad and sorrowful disaster may bear fruit for eternity to His praise and glory in the salvation of your soul, dear reader, and in the salvation of many who are now mourning the loss of loved ones whom they will never see again on earth!
A. H. B.