Christian fiction; Second Advent -- Fiction; Tribulation (Christian eschatology) -- Fiction
"Friends, I have searched my New Testament from end to end. I have
been up two whole nights, and I have read the New Testament through
from Matthew to Revelation, twice. But I can find no provision for the
position I find myself in. I can find no guidance as to how to be
saved. The whole situation is too solemn, too awful for any fooling.
Does anyone here know? Can anyone here tell us how we may find God,
now that the salt of the earth--the real Christians are gone, and now,
too, that the Holy Spirit who, of old time--not yet a full week, but it
seems an eternity--led souls to God through Christ."
There was something so solemn, so pathetic in the man's manner and
utterance, that even the ribald fools who had previously interrupted,
were silent.
The hush was intense. The ticking of the clock could be heard
distinctly.
Impelled by a power which he could not have defined or described, Ralph
Bastin rose to his feet.
The hush deepened. Then a voice broke the silence, crying:
"Bastin, editor of 'The Courier'!"
He was very pale, but the light of a rare courage flashed in his eyes.
He acknowledged the recognition of himself by an inclination of the
head. Then amid a strange hush he began to speak, his voice husky, at
first, rapidly clearing as he went on:
"Friends, I take it that this is the most momentous Sunday that has
ever been, since the first one--the day of the resurrection of the
Christ. Our friend who has just spoken has surely voiced the question
of many hearts here this morning, and many other troubled hearts the
wide world over.
"Let me say, right here, that my friend and colleague, Mr. Tom Hammond,
the originator and late editor of 'The Courier,' was in the very act of
explaining the wonderful, expected return of Christ (expected by him
though scoffed at by myself) when he was 'caught up' from my very
presence, and then I knew what a fool I had been to neglect God and His
salvation."
The nut-cracking interrupter in the gallery, with a burst of laughter,
began mockingly to sing the old revival chorus, "Come to Jesus, come to
Jesus, come to Jesus, just now, just----"
"Silence! you blasphemous, ribald fool!" The words leaped from the
lips of Ralph Bastin, in a tone of command that literally awed the
interrupter. The effect, too, upon the hesitating, vacillating mass of
people was, for the moment at least, to arouse their sympathy with
Ralph, and a little murmur of applause followed.
At the same time a soldier in uniform, a man of giant proportions, who
was sitting almost immediately behind the disturber, rose in his seat,
and addressing the man in front of him, cried, in a stentorian voice:
"See here, mouthy, we're about fed up with your gas, so if you give us
so much as one wag of that cursed red rag of yours, I'll pick you up
and snap you in half across my knee, as I would snap a stick."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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