A Sorrowful Illustration

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 10, 1907

A Sorrowful Illustration

ABOUT TWO MILES from this Office, on the evening of December 30, occurred one of the most terrible railroad disasters in the history of this country. A heavy train, without passengers, drawn by the most powerful locomotive on the line and running at a high rate of speed in a dense fog, overtook a local passenger-train at Terra Cotta Station, and tore through its coaches like a great double-moldboard plow, throwing splintered débris and the dead and mangled bodies of men, women, and children to right and left, or grinding bodies in an unrecognizable mass under its ponderous wheels. Forty-five lives were snuffed out by some one's mistake. It was a pitiful and terrible sight. One moment happy voices were calling out pleasant good-bys, and the next moment they were hushed in death or pealing out in fright and pain. We have seen no illustration so apt as this of the course of sin through this world—the passing of the danger-signal, the wild running in the fog, the sorrow, the misery, the pain, and the death in the darkness—it is all there. The railroads would give much to make a recurrence of such disasters impossible, but are not able. Jesus Christ gave his life to bring the disasters of sin to an end; and he is able, and his purpose will soon be accomplished. The blame for this disaster is not yet placed, and never will be placed by the official investigators just where it should be. In the last analysis it will be found that the covetousness of the age is at the bottom of it; and as this spirit increases,—as we know it will,—traveling by rail will become more dangerous, as we have been warned that it would. Truly there is no safety in this world outside of Christ.