The Uncanny Submarine by Frank A. Coffin

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 4, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 18.

“The Uncanny Submarine”

By Frank A. Coffin

By FRANK A. COFFIN

This caption appears over an editorial that was printed in the Los Angeles Express of February 27, and which portrays in graphic language the horrors of sea warfare, and the lengths to which national hate will drive men in the slaughter of their fellows.

The editorial is based upon a brief dispatch telling how sailors on the Dulwich were compelled to row away from their sinking ship in small boats, and that they were on the high seas all day and all night, struggling to reach the French coast. “While pulling towards the coast,” continues the dispatch, “seeking a ship which might rescue them, they saw the submarine rise to the surface several times, as if watching them, and then disappear again.”

CHASED BY THE SUBMARINE

“Can you imagine anything more uncanny than that?” asks the editor of the Express. “In the first place, to feel the shock of a torpedo explosion, then to realize that your ship is sinking, then to commit your fate to the ocean in a rowboat, and then, from time to time, to see a huge armored whale, with its periscope eye, rise out of the water near at hand, take a menacing squint at you, and dive out of sight again — it is an experience which would beggar the descriptive powers of a Jules Verne.”

“What emotions must have played in the minds of those battered seamen! Filled with hatred and anger, no doubt, yet beset by fear, and realizing that it was in the power of this submerged pursuer to work its vengeance further upon them at any moment, their thoughts must have been worth far more than the proverbial penny which custom prescribes as the value of cogitations. Henceforth, men who go down to the sea in ships will insert a new clause in their litany, and pray that from the unseen terror the good Lord will spare them.”

God has fulfilled His prediction of Dan. 12:4, that knowledge should be increased; but because the thoughts of men’s hearts are only evil continually, as they were in Noah’s day, they have perverted into an agency for wholesale murder that which God has given them to be used in benefiting humanity.

LEARNING AS A CIVILIZER

The world has turned to learning as a means of civilizing; but great knowledge, without the love of God in the heart, has led to the awful spectacle we now see in Europe, where millions are “scientifically” butchering their fellows.

Men are asking, “Has Christianity failed?” It is not Christianity which has failed, but the lack of it. Men have come to that place predicted by the apostle, where they have the form of godliness without the power. They are veneered professors. They have made clean the outside of the cup and the platter. The majority are as whited sepulchers, as said Jesus concerning many who professed godliness in His day. Although well dressed, although cultured, although professors of Christianity, attendants upon church services, and donors to church work, yet, in many cases, “within they are full of extortion and excess.”

HUMANITY HAS FAILED

It is not Christianity which has failed; it is humanity. Man cannot save himself. He has tried, and has failed miserably. He needs a Saviour. He needs the Saviour. Christ might well say of this generation, as of Jerusalem of old, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!” In God’s word, He has revealed His will concerning us. He has provided for man’s redemption from sin. He will implant in man’s heart the principle of love to take the place of hate. Through Jesus Christ’s great sacrifice, an atonement has been made for man, and He is able to remove selfishness and sin from the heart. When this is done, knowledge will benefit humanity by being used unselfishly to serve the world. Without Jesus, the world is lost.

“SHALL WAX WORSE AND WORSE”

God has told us plainly in the Bible that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” We cannot hope for a millennium of prosperity and happiness on this earth now, before Jesus appears in the clouds of heaven; for we are on the verge of “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation.” Dan. 12:1. But God has prepared a place, a home, a mansion, for those who commit their ways unto Him, and He will never leave them nor forsake them. Though the “uncanny submarine” may be the terror of the seas; though the soaring bomb droppers may be the dread of city dwellers; though earthquakes, and volcanoes, and tornadoes, and floods, the sea and the waves roaring, may cause men’s hearts to fail them for fear, yet “he that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”