The Great Eastern built over 150 years ago, was hailed as one of man’s greatest successes: It was big-the biggest ship of its time. It was six times larger than any other ship then afloat.
Expensive? Construction cost more than twice the estimate, and it was launched in the midst of a recession that brought many of its investors to bankruptcy.
But what a sensation it caused wherever it went! Its first arrival in New York met with a wild reception. People traveled hundreds of miles to view this new phenomenon of the new age of progress. An Englishman living in America is said to have fallen on his knees and exclaimed: “This is the proudest moment of my life! God, I thank Thee that I am an Englishman!”
Unfortunately, it usually sailed more than half empty. Smaller ships were as fast and much less expensive to operate. At last a real use was found: It could carry huge amounts of cable. It laid the first successful cable link between Britain and America, followed by four more and one from the Suez to India. There was only a limited demand for cable, not enough to keep this ship in business. (Remember, this was long ago; now the oceans are crossed with an amazing spider web of communication cables.)
After being put to a descending variety of uses, the Great Eastern was sold for less than one eighth of its cost and was broken up for scrap iron. It became just one more in a large group of failures: (1) the “unsinkable Titanic”; (2) the largest airship ever built, the airship Hindenburg, which exploded and burned while landing; (3) the so-called “Spruce Goose,” which only flew one mile (and that only seventy feet high). Then there is the Concorde, grounded after costing France and England millions of dollars, ending as just a tourist attraction at a Long Beach pier, proof, as someone said, that man’s reach exceeds his grasp.
After seeing so many failures with things that are merely earthly and material, can we expect the minds and hands that failed to fly that wooden airplane higher than seventy feet to build a structure capable of reaching heaven? It was tried at the Tower of Babel; did it succeed? No, no, NO! It can never be.
There is only one way-a tried and trusted way for the millions who have believed God and have accepted His offer of the one true way. The Lord Jesus told us that “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.”
How do we come?
We believe, we trust, we receive. How simple it is! How profound!