346. A Railway Accident
A Railway Accident
Nah_2:4 : ’93The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings.’94
If that be not an express rail-train under full headway at night, what is it? The use of steam may have been one of the lost arts, Robert Fulton and James Watt recovering what Nahum the prophet had known centuries before. When you read this text, you hear the clash of the car coupling, the roar of the wheels and the terrific velocity which you may hear any night on the iron track between New York and Buffalo, between Cincinnati and Pittsburg, between Charleston and Savannah, between Edinburgh and Dundee. ’93The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways; they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings.’94
For moral and religious advantage I call your mind this morning to the precipitation of the Scottish rail-train at the river Tay last Sabbath night. All the surroundings of that scene are so fresh in my memory that I cannot refrain from this sermon.
On the morning of the thirty-first of July last, after consulting with some friends at Dundee as to whether I had better take the train all the way to Glasgow, or go part the distance on the river Tay, I was advised to the latter, and so stepped on board the steamer Lass o’92 Gowrie. The flag of the steamer fluttered in a stout gale, though at the same time the sun was flooding the land and the water and the sky with golden glory. I had seen the Hudson and the Rhine, but for some reason the beauty and magnificence of the river Tay that morning thrilled me more than any landscape I have ever looked at. The banks of the river have on them the signs of present wealth and of historical reminiscence’97orchards and farmsteads and mansions. From its birth at Loch Tay to its translation into the German ocean it is one long enchantment. Elcho Castle, Lintore Abbey, Round Tower of Abernethy, Balnabrich Castle, suggest the past; until you imagine you can almost see the flash of the ancient claymore and hear the battle-shout of Robert Bruce and Wallace and Thomas de Longueville, and can almost hear the challenge of Clan Chattan to Clan Inhele. Did ever so bright a sky look down into so enchanting a river between such historical banks?
But the present must rival the past. There it is, fairy-like for exquisiteness and majestic for arching span’97the bridge across the river Tay. Ten minutes or fifteen minutes after leaving the Dundee docks we come to this architectural triumph, which is the pride of all Great Britain. A ruddy Scotchman, standing on the deck, said to me, ’93Have you anything like that in America?’94 I said, ’93Nothing like it.’94 A bridge nearly two miles in length, eighty-seven spans, eighty feet above the surface of the water. The very best possible view we got of it from the deck of the steamer Lass o’92 Gowrie. There was nothing that morning to indicate coming calamity’97nothing in the glee of the passengers, nothing in the clouds crystalline or the waters opaline, nothing in the architectural triumph which seemed not so much to have been built up as to have gracefully and supernaturally alighted. When last Sabbath afternoon the conductor at Edinburgh lifted his hand in signal to the engineer, and the train started, what a smooth opening to a tragical chapter! What more fascinating than that rail-train! Across the plain, how it glides! Through the villages, how it darts! Under the shadow of the rocks, how it rushes! On and on, hour after hour. But what peril ahead! Will not some switchman, with red flag of danger, run out? Will not some echo of the rocks cry ’93Stop!’94 or some voice of the night wind halt the doomed procession?
How dumb and unsympathetic the natural world seems before such a crisis! Stop that train! On and on, as by inexorable fate, it comes until it reaches the abutments, and puts its iron foot on that bridge, which henceforth shall be more memorable than Norwalk or Ashtabula. A man walking on the bank says he thinks he saw a shower of sparks and the falling of the lanterns; but I do not think until the last great day it will be known whether the whirlwind had removed the spans of the bridge before the train reached them, opening a chasm down which the cars chased each other, or whether, as is the more probable, that great procession of human life under the grasp of the Euroclydon swayed to and fro with mighty swing, to and fro with a lurch that makes the blood curdle, to and fro until the cars slipped the track, and coaches and engine and guardsmen and passengers with lightning velocity were hurled down through the night, through the spaces, down a hundred feet, down, crash, crash, crash! All dead! Some by fright, some by bruises, some by drowning, but all dead. Death captured the train, put his foot on the brakes, collected the tickets, stopped the royal mail-bags, arrested the speed and shocked all Christendom. They were fathers and mothers, they were brothers and sisters, they were sons and daughters, and the Queen’92s telegram, thrilling with sympathy, expressed the feeling of all nations. A Merry Christmas just behind them. A Happy New Year just before them. Half-way between the lighted candles of the Christmas tree and the salutations of the opening year they disappeared forever. The laughter of holiday festivity broken up by the shriek of unparalleled casualty. The bridge broke! What a text for a sermon!
Some unwise and morbid people may say, ’93So much for Sabbath-breaking;’94 for there are people who are very generous in the distribution of God’92s judgments, and if a party sailing out on the Sabbath-day get drowned, these critics immediately annex the disaster to the infraction of holy hours. Now, I believe in a strict observance of the holy Sabbath, but I think that the Lord’92s thunderbolts are too heavy for us to handle! And the sooner that kind of morbid moralization is driven out of the Sabbath-school libraries the better. Who knows on what errand of necessity or mercy those passengers got on the train that day! The argument that such men make goes too far, according to their own argument; because among the multitudes of rail-trains on both continents, on all continents, that Sabbath-day they all reached their destination except one; and because of every one thousand passengers on that Lord’92s Day, on the different continents nine hundred and ninety-nine got safely home. Ergo, Sabbath traveling is commendable. Now, I reject such an argument as that. While we advocate the strictest observance of God’92s holy day, the Lord knows that we who are safe and happy today, if we had our just deserts, there would have been broken bridges enough to take us all down. Pushing aside this morbid moralization about Sabbath catastrophe, I come to take a broad, common-sense, and Christian view of that event which dropped one, two, three, four, five, six, seven cars into a watery sepulcher. Look at the flashing lights as they go down.
Learn first from this railroad plunge in Scotland that God is mightier than human invention, and that science ought to be more reverential and worshipful. That Tay bridge was a triumph of engineering. Thomas Bouch, the famous architect, backed by one million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, thought he had built a bridge that could stand the tornadoes and the floods and the rail-trains. I hold in my hand a pamphlet I bought on the river Tay which reads:
What will help to both extend and perpetuate the importance of this locality is the erection of the Tay bridge, which exhibits a triumph of science and mechanical skill showing the rapid strides of the physical progress of the age. Fifty years ago, such a bridge could not have been constructed, the mechanical appliances required not being then available.
General Hutchinson, the supervisor of railways in Scotland, pronounced that bridge safe beyond all necessity; but under the blast of God’92s nostrils two thousand feet of it are gone. All success to human invention, all honor to scientific achievement, but let us remember that higher than grandest arch of grandest bridge is the throne of the Lord Almighty, and it becomes strongest hammer and mightiest pulley and most skilful quadrant and longest range telescope to be put down at his feet.
Science says it can do almost anything. It overrules the Bible, it disputes with God the government of the universe, it makes the Creator a superfluity, since all things were made by a fortuitous concourse of atoms; it throws away the archangel’92s trumpet which wakes the dead, and there is to be no resurrection. Yes, it proposes to build a bridge over into the next life, and men start on it with their long trains of immortal hopes, and they think the bridge is beautiful, and the bridge strong’97never such girders and never such arches’97but midway the Lord blows upon it and they are destroyed without remedy.
Let human invention and science do their best’97span widest rivers, scale highest heights, fathom deepest depths, start longest rail-trains in swiftest velocity; but let them be reverential before that God before whom Isaac Newton and Kepler and Professor Silliman and Joseph Henry and Louis Agassiz were not ashamed to bow. Herschel staggered back from his telescope exhausted and overwhelmed, unable any longer to look at the display of God’92s omnipotence. In every observatory, in every scientific school, in every museum, in every architect’92s studio, let there be an altar of worship as well as philosophic apparatus.
Again, this calamity at the Tay bridge impresses me with the idea that a bridge which does not reach clear across is of no use. The stability of the abutment on the Fifeshire side tempted the train to go on. If that abutment had been washed away, the train would not have attempted the bridge. And that is the difficulty in the structures which men make for our immortal soul to pass over into a great eternity. They do very well for this side. They seem to be made up of good morals and of high respectabilities and of elegant manners and of good neighborhood’97all these making a very good structure for this side; but immortal souls attempting to cross on that bridge never get to the mountains of myrrh. Such a bridge as that never took over one soul, never will take over a soul. Oh! we want a complete bridge from this world across the river of death, or no bridge at all. Blessed be God such a bridge has been constructed, the abutments blasted from the Rock of Ages, the timber brought from Calvary, fastened with the nails and the spikes of the cross. Starting on this side that bridge you go clear over to the other side, ’93kept by the power of God through faith unto complete salvation.’94 ’93And the rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that structure; but it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.’94
I warrant you there were Scotchmen last Sabbath night in that rail-train who did not go down with the shower of sparks and cinders; they only just crossed over into the companionship of their great countrymen, John Knox and Thomas Chalmers and John Brown, the martyred Ayrshire carrier, and Renwick’97James Renwick’97and the victims of Dunnottar Castle, and those great Christian souls whom bloody McKenzie and Lord Claverhouse hastened into glory. There was not any accident with those dying Christians. Instead of landing in Dundee they landed in Heaven.
God has a great many children we do not recognize. They make no fuss about their religion, and they have not anything to do with those people who have more gab than grace; but out of the debris of a railroad crash God can pick them in half a minute. I do not know whether Robert Burns wrote it, or whether it was written in regard to him’97these words:
If there be another world, he lives in bliss;
If not another, he made the best of this.
Blessed be God, our religion makes the best of this world, and takes all the next. And that is a good religion to have, whether on the banks of the Tay or the Hudson.
This railroad disaster at the river Tay last Sabbath night also impresses me with the fact that all travelers ought to have spiritual insurance. The world goes on wheels and they turn faster and faster. I said to the conductor of an Erie railroad train last Monday night, ’93How many trains go over this track in a day?’94 and he said, ’93Between one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty.’94 What multitudes are shot into and out of our great cities day by day! The more than one hundred and fifty millions of dollars paid in this country every year for passenger tickets, the more than twenty-eight millions of pounds paid in the United Kingdom for passenger tickets every year, give some idea of the immensity of modern travel. On the continent of Europe there are over fifty-two thousand miles of railway. The Holy Land will yet hear the shriek of the steam whistle, and the solemn silence of Palestine will be broken by the conductor’92s shout of ’93All aboard for Jerusalem!’94 ’93Twenty minutes for dinner at Damascus!’94 ’93Change cars for the Dead Sea!’94 Railroads to tunnel every mountain, to cross every river, to intermarry the cities, to interlock the nations. Under the very best of management there will be accident, and generally it will be sudden, giving no opportunity to ask what next.
I have been on three rail-trains off the track, and I know, as some of you know, that the excitement and consternation of such a scene forbid all spiritual adjustment. How long did those passengers at Norwalk, at Ashtabula, at the river Tay, have to prepare for eternity? Not five minutes, nor four minutes, nor three minutes, nor two minutes nor one minute. I say this not to make you cowardly for your journey, but to make you placid by antecedent preparation. Do not let the interests of your immortal soul be dependent upon a frosted rail or a drunken switch-tender or an incompetent bridge architect or a conductor’92s timepiece or a freshet or a tornado. If a man is, through a reconstructed nature, bound for heaven, it makes but little difference whether he goes by land or water, by day or by night, through exploded steamboat or tumbled rail-train. He has a ’93through ticket,’94 and whatever connections he may miss again he will finally ride into the Grand Central Depot of the universe. If you want to go to a certain city, and there be a train that goes at the rate of fifteen miles the hour, and one that goes forty miles an hour, which do you take? The quickest. Protracted sickness for a Christian man is the slow train. Sudden and instantaneous departure by accident is the quick train. You ask me what mode of departure I choose’97the prolonged or the abrupt? It is not ours to decide. All I ask for myself and yourself is that we be fully and grandly ready. Between the top of a bridge and the bottom of a river is a small allowance to get our souls fit for a residence five hundred thousand million centuries.
Again, this plunge of the rail-train at the river Tay impresses me with the fact that death is no respecter of persons. In America we know but very little about the classification of passengers; but in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe the distinction is very marked. This doomed train of last Sabbath night was made up of one first-class passenger car, one second-class car, four third-class cars, and the brake-men’92s van. I do not know which went over and down first; but they all went down. The fact that the passengers in the first-class car had paid twice as much for their tickets as the passengers in the third-class car gave them no preference in the moment of calamity. ’93They that trust in their wealth and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him that he shall not see corruption.’94 Complete democracy of peril. Complete democracy of graveyard. Death is so dim-sighted and so blundering-footed that he staggers across Axminster tapestry as though it were a bare floor, and sees no difference between the fluttering rags of a tatterdemalion and a conqueror’92s gonfalon. Side by side we must all come down. No first-class, second-class or third-class in death or the grave.
The subjects of Charlemagne, after his death, set his corpse on a throne in a sepulcher, and put a scepter in his stiff hand and a crown on his bloodless temples; but long ago he came down to prostrate condition. At the Tuileries, in Paris, during the revolution of July, when the mob broke in, a boy wounded to death was laid on the emperor’92s throne, and his blood gave deeper crimson to the imperial upholstery; but after all he came down into the dust, where we must all lie. Death goes into the house at Gad’92s Hill and he says, ’93I want that novelist.’94 Death goes into Windsor Castle and he says, ’93I want Victoria’92s consort.’94 Death goes into Ford’92s Theatre at Washington and says, ’93I want that President.’94 Death goes on the Zulu battlefield and says, ’93I want that French Prince Imperial.’94 Death goes into the marble palace at Madrid and says, ’93Give me Queen Mercedes.’94 Death goes into the almshouse and says, ’93Give me that pauper.’94 Death comes to the Tay bridge and says, ’93Discharge into my cold bosom all those passengers.’94 Alike! Alike!
By embalmment, by sculptured sarcophagus, by pyramidal grandeur, by epitaphal commemoration, by more intoxicated ’93wake’94 or grander cathedral dirge, we may seem to give a caste to the dead; but it is soon over. I took out my memorandum-book and lead-pencil in Westminster Abbey a few weeks ago, and I copied a verse that it would interest you to hear:
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones;
Here they lie’97had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands.
No first-class or second-class or third-class in death. Only the righteous and the wicked.
Before, last Sabbath night, the keeper of the Tay bridge and James Roberts, the superintendent of the North British Railway, crawled with bleeding hands on the bridge to find out what had kept back the train, all the passengers, first-class, second-class, third-class, had reached their eternal destination, and without reference to what was on earth their social or financial or literary or political status. If they were ready what a glorious transition from winter night to summer morning! What a gleeful thing to die, if one is ready to leave behind us all the sorrows, all the annoyances, all the sicknesses, all the fatigues, all the persecutions and trials of this life, and step out into the freedom of heaven, imparadised, irradiated!
Governor Briggs, of Massachusetts, when dying, said, ’93Doctor, I am afraid you are going to cure me. Oh! how I want to be in heaven!’94 One of the lords of Great Britain described to me last summer his Christian boy’92s departure, and he told me that the lad’92s anticipation of heaven was so rapturous that the countess’97the boy’92s mother’97said to the physician, ’93Do not discourage him by telling him he is going to get well.’94 I do not know why Christians make such an ado about death when it is a lifting up and an exaltation and an enthronement. I should think an organist at the obsequies of a Christian man would be confused as to whether it would be better to render Dead March in Saul or Handel’92s Hallelujah Chorus.
I implore you, my hearers, under the light of the falling lanterns of the rail-train, and on this, the first Sabbath in January, within sound of the passing train of linked years rolling on with more than express velocity’97I implore you to seek preparation for that hour when the archangel, with one foot on the sea and the other foot on the land, shall swear by him that liveth forever and ever, that time shall be no longer. But before I dismiss this august assemblage, we must bow our heads in sympathetic prayer for those Scottish and English homes which were awfully desolated last Sabbath night, when the bridge broke.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage