THE shocking tidings of a dreadful disaster called for a day of general humiliation and prayer throughout the entire State of Virginia.
On a Wednesday, in May 1870, the court-room in the second story of the Richmond Capitol was densely crowded. The audience was eager to hear an important decision in the Court of Appeals. The bells had just struck the hour of eleven. The clerk of the court had entered, and placed his books on the table. One judge was in his seat, but his associates had not yet left the conference room. The counsel and the reporters were in their places, and the spectators were engaged warmly in conversation, when all at once, without a moment’s warning, a large girder snapped in twain, causing the crowded gallery to be wrenched away from the wall and precipitated into the center of the court-room, the floor of which could not bear such a sudden extra weight, and was crushed through; and this, with its mass of human beings, fell into the Hall of Delegates below. The scene was terrible. Those who survived in the ruin saw, through the confusion of plasters and timbers, the mangled bodies of fifty or sixty dead, and above a hundred wounded.
A member of the Legislature thus describes his fearful situation: ― “An unearthly yell of agony; then came the crash, and I sank into darkness. I found myself under a mass of rubbish, with a dead body over me, and a wounded man under me, and another at my side. The poor fellow under me said, ‘Oh, my! if I could only fear God always as I do now! How wicked I have been all my days! O God, forgive me, spare me, and I will be a true follower of Jesus.’ The man at my side exclaimed, ‘O death! where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?’”
What a contrast in the dying cries of these two men! That morning they had entered the Capitol in perfect ignorance of what that day might bring forth; but the one was ready to answer his call, and the other a neglecter of the great salvation.
Now the procrastinator longed for five minutes, though a lifetime had been given him; but he whose trust was in the Lord Jesus could triumphantly cry out, “O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?” If the Christian might summon the rider upon the pale horse, and demand, “O death! where is thy sting?” he should answer. “I left my sting buried lone ago in the heart of the Son of God, when he delivered the prey from the hand of the mighty, and set free the captive.”
As death passes on, thus preaching good tidings to the trembling sinner, let the grave follow in his wake―O grave! where is thy victory? “I am overcome, I am robbed of my victory. One has been and passed through: he has broken the bars of the tomb, and gone up on high leading captivity captive: for it was not possible that the glorious Son of the living God should be holden by me.”
Glorious news, indeed, is this, told forth by vanquished death and the emptied grave. This is a gospel to die by, and if to die by, to live by. “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”