THIS is the name of a cavern in the hills of Auvergne. These mountains and hills of Auvergne are a strange and beautiful region. The mountains were once, long long ago, active volcanoes. They rise suddenly from the great plain which lies between Paris and Auvergne, high, steep, conical mountains; their empty craters now grown over with grass, and the cows and goats feeding where once the flames and the lava rushed forth, sending fiery streams of the melted lava down the steep mountain sides into the wooded glens below. But though those ancient fires no longer blaze from the mountain tops, they seem to be imprisoned in the deep caverns under the mountain valleys. Here and there hot mineral waters burst forth, and many people go to bathe in them, and to drink them. In one place is a black stream of liquid pitch, and in another a petrifying spring, which covers all that it touches with a white coat of shining spar.
And amongst these hills so curious, and so beautiful, is the Grotto of the Dog. There is nothing beautiful or even remarkable to be seen in this long, dark cavern. But it is one of the strangest places of the mountain region. You enter it by a wooden door, and are warned by the doorkeeper to walk upright, neither to sit nor stoop. If you do so, you are suffocated. For the lower part of the cavern is filled with a suffocating and poisonous gas, which being heavier than the air, never rises above a certain level, about four feet. The air above is pure and sweet, but put down your head for a moment, and the foul gas stops your breath, your head seems to whirl round, and in a few seconds you would fall senseless and die. To prove this, a dog is sometimes allowed to run into the Grotto, and any who are cruel enough to wish to see the experiment, may watch his speedy end. For this reason it is called the Grotto of the Dog.
How wonderful are the parables which the Lord has woven in amongst the varied works of His hands, all around us! “Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.”
For have we not been living all our lives in the Grotto of the Dog? Once we, who are God’s children, lay dead and senseless in the stifling gas. But the voice of the Son of God awakened us from the sleep of death, and we stood upon our feet, and breathed the air of heaven. We were walking still upon the earth upon which the foul gas was resting, but we breathed it no more, death had no more dominion over us. We were above it, and it could not rise to the glorious place to which our God had brought us, for our life was hid with Christ in God. Is it not thus that we pass through this sad world of sin, and death, and condemnation? We dare not rest in it, but we move on amidst the dying and the dead, glad to stretch out a helping hand to those who are lying in the depths of the poisoned air, but we may not breathe it, or we too would fall senseless beside them. It is true that a believer in Jesus can never perish, neither can any pluck him out of His hand, But a child of God may fall and slumber; he may lose all sense of fellowship with God, all joy, all rest and peace of conscience. He may become cold, and deadened in heart and spirit. He may be carnal, and halfhearted, and useless, and powerless. And why is this? It is because he has not been abiding in Christ; he has not been breathing the blessed air of heaven, but the foul, stupefying air of this present evil world. He has gone down to the level of the world, and walked as the world walks. It may be for the sake of gain. It may be for amusement, or for natural love of relations and friends, it may be from the love of the higher pleasures of art, or of intellect. It may be from carelessness that he has slipped, step by step, into the ways of the world. It may be under the pretext of doing good to worldly friends, or with a vain hope of gilding over the cross of Christ by conformity to the world in its ways. It may be from the fear of being hated, and separated from the company of friends, and reproached, and having his name cast out as evil. It is always because the heart has become cold to Christ. And once down in the poisoned air, all power for service is gone. The hand of Christ will rescue His own, as when Peter was sinking in the waves of the sea, but it may be through bitter sorrow and suffering that the soul is brought back to Him. Let us walk on in fellowship with Him, leaning on the Beloved, and abiding in Him, who is in heaven, and the foul air of the world below will never reach us. To ask how much we may have of the world, is the question of the heart grown cold to Christ. To ask how little can we have of it, is the constant question of the heart to whom He is precious. Thus shall we pass safely through the poisoned grotto, and have power to raise and rescue the perishing souls in the depths below. But it will be as one apart from and above the deadly level, as one breathing a pure fresh air into which the perishing may be raised, passing then from death to life, from the power of Satan unto God.
“But I go into the world,” you say, “to carry life to the perishing, and there to bear witness for Christ. I am in the world, but not of it, and I have many opportunities which people never have who shut themselves up over their Bible, and leave others to their fate.”
“Yes, in a ball room,” said one, “I can have communion with God, and bear witness for Him just as much in lace and jewels as in black serge and a shabby bonnet, and do much more good by mixing with all my neighbors than if I were one of a narrow-minded set who like to be something peculiar.”
A little story has just been told me, which comes as a word in season, another parable from the great book of pictures, which God has opened before us in the world which His hands have made. A lady had a canary, which sang so sweetly that she liked to have it always in her room, and she found a constant pleasure in it, so that when summer came, and she spent most of the day sitting out in her garden, she was in the habit of hanging the canary’s cage upon a tree that she might have it near her. But as she sat beneath the tree, she did not observe that the sparrows collected in numbers to watch the strange bird, and to eat the canary’s sugar, and pick up the seed that was scattered about. And as they sat on the cage, and in the branches around, they chirped to the canary, and the canary chirped in reply. And after a little while the lady remarked that the canary sang no more, but only chirped like the sparrows. She was grieved at this, and took the canary back to the house, and let him go out no more amongst the sparrows. But it was all in vain. The canary had lost his song, and thenceforward he chirped continually, and none of the sparrows had learned to sing.
“And so,” said my friend who told me this story, “I have known many a hundred of these chirping Christians, but I have never yet met with the sparrow that learned the song they lost.” F. B.