WHEN the torpedo boat No.― sank in deep water, not far from where I am now writing, great efforts were made by the Admiralty to raise the wreck.
Divers were employed to fix cables to the hull, and pursued their hazardous work far down beneath the surface of the sea.
While one of these men was thus engaged, five-and-twenty fathoms deep, his comrade above heard him signaling for assistance. Faint and helpless, far from human aid, the poor fellow could only send up his cry of distress through the telephone attached to his helmet. But it was heard, and his faithful fellow-diver in the boat above replied, “I will come down and help you.”
Reader, has such a cry ever gone up from your heart and lips to the throne of God as to the need of your soul? Is it possible that during the years you have spent on earth, in any moment of which you might have been called away, the danger of that soul of yours being eternally lost has not once brought you on your knees to cry for mercy? Wake up to your peril now, then! Let your cry go up, and it will be heard (Rom. 10:1313For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:13)).
Down went the brave fellow-diver, and soon stood beside his fainting comrade. He found that the “life-tube” had become entangled owing to the strong current, and that consequently he was being slowly but surely suffocated.
They could not speak to each other, but grasping his hand to let his fainting comrade know that help had come, he set to work to release him from his entanglement, and, having done so, bore him to the surface.
Deep down in death, ruined by sin, entangled in Satan’s chains, lay man, when God, in boundless love, gave His only begotten Son to be the Saviour. Willingly Jesus came from heaven to earth to save the lost. Upon the cross He took upon Himself the burden of man’s guilt, and bore all the weight of God’s righteous judgment against the sinner.
He finished the work which He came to do, and God the Father gave testimony to the efficacy of that work by raising Christ from the dead.
Now He sits on high, the Living One, able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by Him; and He will receive you, dear reader, this very hour, if you come to Him. Oh! trust Him now.
With sadness we have to relate how the diver, rescued from the deep, succumbed through the shock, and died soon after reaching the surface. But oh! with what joy can we testify of the power of Christ to save and hold in life every one of His own forever.
We have not now to say, “Who shall ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down from above)? or, “Who shall descend into the deep?” (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). God’s message of salvation is: “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart:... that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:8, 98But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; 9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:8‑9)).
Christ is so precious to God the Father, and His work upon the cross has so perfectly met all the righteous claims of God’s throne, that our acceptance is, and can be, on that ground alone. To seek another is to neglect God’s great salvation; and the end of this is eternal death.
W. H. B.